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  • Microsoft cancels Israeli spy unit access after tech worker revolt

    In a stunning and massive development, tech giant Microsoft has announced that it is terminating parts of the Israeli military’s access to proprietary technology that it was using to conduct mass surveillance and targeting of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. “Microsoft told Israeli officials late last week that Unit 8200, the military’s elite spy agency, had violated the company’s terms of service by storing the vast trove of surveillance data in its Azure cloud platform,” the Guardian reports. “The termination is the first known case of a US technology company withdrawing services provided to the Israeli military since the beginning of its war on Gaza.” This major development would not have happened without the joint-investigative work of reporters at The Guardian, +972 Magazine, and Local Call exposing Microsoft’s complicity with Unit 8200’s mass-surveillance campaign, but it also would not have happened without the disruptive protests by tech workers within Microsoft. In this panel discussion, TRNN Editor-in-Chief Maximillian Alvarez speaks with three fired Microsoft tech workers and members of the “No Azure for Apartheid” campaign—Nisreen Jaradat, Julius Shan, and Anna Hattle—about the role workers have played in pressuring Microsoft to end its complicity in Israel’s war crimes.

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    The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.

    Maximillian Alvarez:

    In a stunning and massive development, tech giant Microsoft has announced that it is terminating parts of the Israeli military’s access to proprietary technology that it was using to conduct mass surveillance and targeting of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.

    As The Guardian reported last week, “Microsoft told Israeli officials late last week that Unit 8200, the military’s elite spy agency, had violated the company’s terms of service by storing the vast trove of surveillance data in its Azure cloud platform, sources familiar with the situation said.

    “The decision to cut off Unit 8200’s ability to use some of its technology results directly from an investigation published by The Guardian last month. It revealed how Azure was being used to store and process the trove of Palestinian communications in a mass surveillance program. The project began after a meeting in 2021 between Microsoft’s Chief Executive Satya Nadella and the unit’s then-Commander Yossi Sariel.

    In response to the investigation, Microsoft ordered an urgent external inquiry to review its relationship with Unit 8200. Its initial findings have now led the company to cancel the unit’s access to some of its cloud storage and AI services.”

    Now, as a journalist, I have to underline the fact that this major policy shift from Microsoft would not have happened without the investigative co-reporting by my colleagues at The Guardian, the Israeli-Palestinian publication +972 Magazine, and the Hebrew-language outlet Local Call. But they were by no means the only forces pressuring Microsoft and exposing the company’s technological and financial complicity in Israel’s genocide and apartheid system in occupied Palestine.

    As Real News viewers and listeners know, we have been extensively covering the tech worker-led revolt from within Microsoft and the grassroots movement to pressure Microsoft to divest from genocide. For more than a year, under the banner of the No Azure for Apartheid movement, current and former tech workers, along with community members and supporters, have been organizing to expose and put an end to Microsoft’s ties to the Israeli war machine and taking actions to disrupt business as usual at Microsoft until their demands were met.

    Those actions included setting up a liberated zone encampment on Microsoft’s global headquarters last month, which I was on the ground reporting on for The Real News, and conducting a sit-in in Microsoft President Brad Smith’s executive office.

    Microsoft responded to those actions by calling the cops and by firing the employees involved. Just about every single Microsoft worker that I’ve interviewed about this in the past two months has been fired.

    Today on The Real News, we are speaking with three of those fired Microsoft workers and members of the No Azure for Apartheid movement.

    Welcome to you all. Thank you so much for speaking with us today. First, I want to go around the table and ask if y’all could introduce yourselves to people watching and give us your initial reactions to this news from Microsoft. In terms of the movement’s struggle to get Microsoft to divest from genocide, as y’all have been repeatedly demanding, what does this news mean and what does it not mean?

    Nisreen Jaradat:

    Hi, so my name is Nisreen Jaradat. I am a former Microsoft worker. I was fired at the end of August after I participated in the Liberation Zone encampments and rallies. I think that this news is evidence that no target, no matter how big is unmovable. Microsoft is the second largest corporation in the world. It is the second largest tech company in the world. And the fact that the exposure of Microsoft complicity by journalists and by activists internally and externally, and the sustained pressure that has been put on Microsoft forced it to cut off some services is evidence that direct action works and that no target is unmovable. I will say though that this is by no means victory. I’ve seen some outlets reporting that Microsoft is all good. Now we can just move on with our lives. No, we can’t. This decision only cuts off a few services to a single military unit and we will not stop organizing.

    We will not stop protesting until all of our demands are met, which includes cutting off all of Azure services and contracts with the Israeli government and military materially. What does this mean for Palestinians on the ground in the West Bank? This really doesn’t mean much. A starving Palestinian child cannot eat a disabled Azure service, and we need to keep that in mind as we’re organizing to ground ourselves, which is what do we need to do for Palestine right now? And until Microsoft fully divests, we’re going to continue. We won’t stop, we won’t rest and we will keep organizing.

    Julius Shan:

    My name is Julius Shan and I’ve been a tech worker at Microsoft for almost five years. I was fired the same day that nazarre was fired for also taking part in the Liberated zone protests and also having been suspended twice for sending out mass emails across the company, talking about Microsoft’s complicity and genocide. So like Nareen said, this is a small but unprecedented win in our movement against Microsoft. It is disabling, again, just a small subset of services that Microsoft provides to the Israeli military and the Israeli government. There are still more than 635 subscriptions that Microsoft supplies to the Israeli military. And what this means is that Microsoft continues to support Israel, it continues to support their military, and it still stands behind the Israeli genocide at this point. The services that Microsoft cut off were moved over to Amazon Web Services sometime in August.

    And so what this means is that the provider of these technologies that enable Israel’s mass surveillance and the creation of lists against Palestinians is now just in the hands of another major American tech corporation. So what this means is that we will not stop escalating, we will not stop mobilizing. We will not stop until all of our demands are met. We will remind Microsoft that there is no moral, legal or ethical way to continue business with an entity that is committing genocide and committing ethnic cleansing. We can see this all televised on our phones every single day, every single hour, every day that goes by a classroom full of children in Gaza is killed by the Israeli military. So we will not stop until Palestine is free. We will not stop escalating. And this shows that direct action does have impact on these enormous entities. These companies are worth trillions of dollars and what a group of tens of activists and community organizers is able to do in collaboration with the news provided by The Guardian nine seven two Mag and local call shows us how our collective forces together are incredibly powerful in forcing the hand of something as powerful as Microsoft. And until Palestine is free, we will not stop.

    Anna Hattle:

    Hi, my name is Anna Hattle and I worked at Microsoft for five years before being terminated a few weeks ago after sitting in at the Microsoft President Brad Smith’s office. I’m also an organizer with the no Azure for Apartheid campaign, as my friends have already named. It’s clear that the news this week is significant and also that it doesn’t actually dismantle the infrastructure that Microsoft is providing to continue enabling the genocide. So we’ve named that Microsoft has decided to cut services to a small subset of the services that they provide to unit 8,200 and to the Israeli military, but they actually haven’t disclosed the details of which services they’re cutting and we can’t even be sure that this will actually prevent them from continuing to use Microsoft technology to do what they’re doing. So it’s important to acknowledge that this doesn’t have the full extent of the material impact that we’re looking for and to stop the genocide in Palestine.

    It is not there. And at the same, it is significant because as the Guardian named it is actually the first time that a US tech company has suspended services to the Israeli military, even if it’s a portion of them after the genocide began. This is really significant because even though again, Microsoft is maintaining their relationship explicitly with the Israeli military, and that’s something that they named that we’re continuing to have that customer relationship with them and that the suspension does not affect that they are actually antagonizing the IMOD and forcing, forcing unit 8,200 to take measures to move elsewhere. And this kind of opens up a new pathway because as we know, a lot of players in the tech industry and in industries in general, they move in lockstep. These corporations, they strategize together and a lot of times they won’t make moves until a different corporation makes a move first. In this case, Microsoft has now made itself the first company to make this move, which opens up the possibilities for so many other corporations and entities to consider what it would mean to cut ties with some aspect of the Israeli military. And that is something that is really significant.

    Maximillian Alvarez:

    It is very significant indeed. And I mean we were sort of talking before we got recording here that I mean we were all a bit shocked. You just don’t expect to see any semblance of good news these days or organizing victories, but they’re out there and we are trying to show y’all out real news viewers and listeners that they are happening. Regular people like you are taking decisive action and changing history by doing so. And I wanted to sort of ask you guys, obviously in the Guardian report that they have a vested interest in lifting up the role of their reporting with 9 7 2 magazine and Local Call. And again, all credit really should go to them for the reporting that they did and the role that that has played in this larger movement. But I want to give you all a chance to talk about the role that you have played in this. How much would you attribute this decision to the pressure that tech workers like yourselves have been putting on Microsoft even long before the Guardian report came out this summer?

    Nisreen Jaradat:

    Yeah, I think I want to answer your question in two parts. So the first one is that this is not the first exposure that the Guardian has done when it comes to Microsoft. It’s just the first one that they’ve publicly taken seriously. I recall last year the Guardian also nine seven two magazine in local call published a really exposing joint investigation that indicated that let the Israeli military’s usage of AI and storage and compute technology and had increased exponentially throughout this genocide. They also revealed that Microsoft workers themselves from the Microsoft Israel subsidiary were on the grounds in Israeli military basis designing surveillance technology. That was all reported on by The Guardian by nine seven two and by local call a few months later, the Associated Press came out with another article saying that Microsoft AI was being used by the Israeli military for transcription, for translation, for searching through intercepted calls, text messages, and audio files. That was all reported on by the Associated Press in February of this year.

    And so the only real difference in the new article that’s come out by the Guardian is the scale of that mass surveillance and naming Satya by name. That was the main difference. However, articles have been reporting about Microsoft complicity for a very long time. The biggest change that we’ve seen is the degree of our escalations, right? So when we started the NoJa Apartheid campaign, we started with our own investigation and our own white paper release that compiled a lot of public information and we had a petition from that time. Our protests have gotten more and more escalatory. We started doing more creative things like interrupting the 50th anniversary Microsoft build responsible AI conferences. And then finally, as you saw in August, well not finally, but most recently we had the encampments and the sit-in in Brad Smith’s office. So while the reporting is extremely important, and I don’t want to discredit that, I also want to attribute to the fact that collective action I think is really the main driver in this decision making, the collective action of workers.

    And we don’t just see this at Microsoft, we’ve seen this from dock workers all over the world who are refusing to accept shipments of weapons that go to the Israeli military and therefore influencing either their company or their government’s positions on that. We see that with academic workers who are striking in support of the student in default. It’s really obvious and it’s getting more and more obvious every day that workers don’t have to just accept the status quo. They don’t have to accept being accessories to the crime of genocide. Workers can and should and have a responsibility to push back on that and revolt in all of the ways that they can.

    Maximillian Alvarez:

    Julius, what about you? I

    Julius Shan:

    Think that was a fantastic answer that Nareen put together. And like she said, this isn’t the first piece of reporting that’s come out regarding Microsoft and Azure’s extent of involvement in providing the technology infrastructure that enables Israel’s genocide, right? We’ve heard all the way back since I think it was January or February in this year that AP News and 9 7 2 together reported Microsoft’s storage and AI usage being utilized very heavily by the Israeli military. And so I think what has been happening over the year has indeed been a culmination of a lot of internal and external organizing, both from workers and from the community. As we’ve seen no Azure for apartheid. Our movement continues to grow, our petition continues to grow, and as our numbers overall gain strength, I think that’s given more and more workers a voice inside of the company. It’s given community workers more visibility and transparency into what Microsoft is doing, especially for people who live around the Seattle area.

    Microsoft is such a big part of the community that makes up people’s lives there. It’s one of the major employers in that area. And to see Microsoft then call in three separate county police departments in the Washington State Police on its own workers and community members, it really showed I think the people in the area just how violent Microsoft is willing to get to suppress any bad news about what it’s doing with the Israeli military. And I think the reporting galvanized us as a group to go after Microsoft even further as we learned more and more about how deeply complicit this company is and just how many heinous war crimes they are empowering. And so by forcing ourselves, well, by organizing our group and taking part in these on-campus protests and the sit-in, I think we really created a lot of pressure on Microsoft in August to address why were these people taking this action?

    Why were these people going? To the extent of going onto on-campus protests of going into Brad Smith’s office and conducting a sit-in and by forcing them to address this, I think we have helped to turn up the heat on Microsoft and really point out that the public is watching everything that they’re doing. The public is becoming more and more informed about the extent to which Microsoft technology is being used to power the genocide against the Palestinian people, and as popular support changes in favor of the Palestinian people in the United States. I think this really goes to show just how by having the community and having real people organize around this cause around halting Microsoft’s support of Israel, I think it shows that the community together exerts a lot of strength in this regard with the power of journalism as well.

    Maximillian Alvarez:

    Anna, anything you want to add to that?

    Anna Hattle:

    Yes, I’d love to add that I think we all know that the moves that Microsoft is making now is not coming out of the goodness of their hearts or the goodwill of the executives. We’re all very clear on that. I want to also emphasize that the information that the Guardian has reported on and the general points about Microsoft’s complicity have actually been concerns that people have been raising for over two years within the company internally and externally. And the impression that Microsoft is trying to give that they didn’t know that these things were happening until the guardian reported on it is false. And the work that they did is so important. And part of it is because the folks there have the platform and the credibility and the audience to convey that information to the public in a way that Microsoft can no longer deny and suppress.

    And between that reporting and also support from people in groups all over the world that have added their voices to ours, to workers in the campaign and to generally pressure Microsoft, that’s all come together to create the situation for them in which they’ve been forced to respond. But I think it’s also really important that all of this general pressure, which can happen from so many different fronts, when it’s exerted behind a direct point that chooses a specific target for its pressure, I think that’s when it becomes really effective and to what my friends already named, I think it’s those pointed actions that we’ve seen really get results from Microsoft. So in the past, for example, when we sent our petition from workers, which now has 2,100 signatures to executives, they released the report of the results of the first investigation that same day and after our sit-in at the president’s office, he had the press conference a few hours later.

    And I think it’s very clear that they’re responding kind of directly to the pressure from the campaign. And it’s also very clear to us that they’re invested in hiding the fact that it is direct pressure from the campaign and protests that led to this change because they don’t want to give the impression that collective action works, that direct action works because that would encourage and ferment exactly the kind of actions that are going to result in change, and both for themselves and probably for the industry at, they don’t want us to know that, and they want to give the impression that they were already doing this, that it’s just about this high level, these high level changes and machinations that are out of workers’ control. And we need to remember that that’s not true and that it is actually worker organizing and they’re trying to prevent all of us from realizing that we have collective power and continuing to exert it.

    Maximillian Alvarez:

    I want to ask a personal question to you three. Reading this news now, do you feel it was worth it losing your jobs to see this result? And would it have been worth it even if Microsoft didn’t make this decision?

    Nisreen Jaradat:

    Yes and yes. So as a Microsoft worker, my work unintentionally but definitely in some capacity did contribute to the genocide of my people in Palestine. And to even attempt to atone for that, it would be worth it to give up every comfort that I have because none of the comforts that can be taken away from us for organizing even compares to what’s happening right now in the Rezi, which is genocide. So yes, losing my job was a trivial price to pay in the overall struggle for a free Palestine.

    Julius Shan:

    Likewise, yes, it was worth losing my job, and yes, it would’ve been worth it even if Microsoft did not choose to cut this subset of services. And losing my job is nothing at all compared to what Palestinians are forced into experiencing at the hand of Israel, powered by Microsoft. My job likeness res was also being a small but unintentional part in contributing to this genocide. In some ways, it is liberating to have had the decision made for me to cut off my ability to even taint myself with that blood money and my job as a privilege to even have the people in Palestine right now have no ability to really hold down a job the way we do. We are so, so lucky to have had the comfort and privilege to work in our little air conditioned tech offices while our technology is being used to plan the mass assassination of thousands of Palestinians, of hundreds of thousands of them.

    And even if Microsoft did not make the decision, did not choose to cut off the subset of services that it did to unit 8,200, I think that it still shows to the world and whoever’s watching the media that this is where Microsoft’s value stands. Microsoft does not stand behind voices of its own workers who ask it to stop supporting genocide, as numerous outlets have clearly reported. Microsoft is absolutely supporting the Israeli military through hundreds of technology subscriptions, and by eliminating us, they’re really showing that it’s untenable to them to have people speak out against this. It’s showing to the world that Microsoft does not want people who support Palestine inside of the company making change. It wants to continue to be able to whitewash itself and wash its hands of blood. And so this firing of us and the stories being told about Microsoft, whether that is the mass surveillance or the uses of storage, or how Microsoft and open AI tools are being used by the Israeli military to commit genocide and even the police brutality on our own community, my job loss is just a small spec in that overall story, but it helps drive what we have all been saying, which is that Microsoft is deeply complicit in this genocide.

    And losing this job helps to tell that story. It shows the world that they are guilty. They wouldn’t have done this if they weren’t guilty.

    Anna Hattle:

    I would have to agree that it was a hundred percent worth it to lose my job, and I would do it even. I mean, I chose to do that before even this news came out. So I would absolutely do it again. And I think that we see often that when you take action that has impact, repression follows, and a lot of times that repression is some evidence that what you’re doing poses enough of a threat to what you’re fighting, that they have to escalate their repression. So frankly, if I wasn’t fired, I think I would realize that I need to be doing more and in order to leverage the privilege that I have to meet my responsibility to do something about my complicity in genocide.

    Maximillian Alvarez:

    So I only have you three for a few more minutes, and with those minutes I want to ask what comes next for the no Azure for Apartheid movement, the broader tech worker movement against genocide. I mean, when I was there reporting on the encampment just feet away from you guys and your coworkers, I was very struck by the banners calling for a global worker Intifada, right? And I want to ask, with the few minutes we have left, what comes next for that effort and what can workers, unions and people of conscience around the country and around the world, what can they learn from your movement that they could be applying in their workplaces, in their communities?

    Nisreen Jaradat:

    Well, I would say that while this result is very vindicating, it is by no means victory and materially for the NoJa for Apartheid campaign, I don’t think much has changed. I think that until our demands are met, we’re going to continue protesting and escalating in always announced and unannounced, and that Microsoft should expect these escalations to continue until they fully divest and meet all of our demands. I would say that throughout labor struggles in history, one thing we always see is that collective action and collective voice is really what drives change. And so any advice I could give or have learned from other labor struggles before me is to come together and keep each other safe and get organized. That’s it.

    Julius Shan:

    I also think that no measure for apartheid, nothing really has changed for us. Our demands still aren’t met. We demand that IOF is all completely cut off from Azure. We want all of our ties with the Israeli military get disclosed. We want Microsoft to call for a ceasefire and we want them to protect employees and upload the free speech. And so far, none of those demands have met. And so we will continue escalating, we will continue protesting until Microsoft meets those demands. And for organizing at large, I echo a lot of what Nareen has said, which is that there is a lot of safety and strength in coming together as a community. I think before I joined Noad Azure for apartheid, I was a scared individual. I was angry. I was grieving on my own about what my work was contributing to. But by joining this movement and becoming a part of it and seeing this really surreal new world where every single person in this movement was aligned on their moral values, it gave me a lot of strength.

    And I think it gave me the strength to use my voice. It gave us our strength to use our voices together, whether anonymously or not. And so I think the takeaway is that community organizing does work. Microsoft responded to our pressure as a community, as an organization that they would not have responded to if these were still just individuals trying to speak their own mind. And so for those out there who are looking to challenge their company, whether you are at Microsoft or at Amazon or Palantir or any number of the other major tech corporations that are complicit in genocide or oppression in any country, whether that’s in Palestine or in the United States or anywhere else in the world, there is power in using your voice and finding other people and building your organization. Being together as a community is what gives us strength. It gives us so much more power. It multiplies the strength of our voices together when we are together.

    Anna Hattle:

    Add on to that. I think that Microsoft has handed us a small concession that is totally insufficient, but what they have shown us is that our pressure is working and that pressure in general can have an impact. And so for our campaign and for hopefully workers all over the world, it’s clear that now is the time more than ever to increase that pressure and to increase the level of collective action that we’re taking because they’ve shown us that they’ve shown us their weakness, and they’ve shown us their willingness to move. And so now we know that our real goals are within reach. I think I also just want to communicate to other workers that sometimes the thing that’s limiting us is our own imagination and our own limits on what we think we can achieve with the number of people that we have and the resources at our disposal.

    And sometimes I think we limit ourselves and we think that our goals are something that we can achieve and we act accordingly. But I think if we do what we need to meet this moment and we reach beyond what the people above us have tried to restrict us to and to make us believe that we’re capable of, we know that we can do so much more. And this is evidence of that. So I hope that this is the start, honestly, of a domino effect and that this concession from Microsoft is the first domino to fall, and that we see workers rise up everywhere and force entities everywhere to divest, to cut ties and end their complicity in genocide.

    This post was originally published on The Real News Network.

  • Gridlock in Belfast as Palestine protestors shut down primary motorway junction

    Belfast Palestine supporters’ response to so-called Israel’s criminal hijacking of the Global Sumud Flotilla has been immediate, with rush hour traffic grinding to a standstill following occupation of a major crossroads near the city centre.

    The group of around 30 activists shut down the York Street area which also connects to the Westlink, causing major delays to traffic.  Footage on the BDS Belfast Instagram page shows 100s of cars frozen as protestors can be heard chanting “Stop the bombing now now now!”:

    There were instances of drivers ramming protestors, while shouting in support of the Zionist entity, though no injuries were reported.  Those on the road made provisions for ensuring that emergency vehicles were permitted to pass.

    Asked for comment, BDS Belfast stated that they were not the organisers, and that the direct action had been a collaboration between Palestine solidarity activists across the city.  In a statement, they said:

    Today, BDS Belfast activists took up the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement’s call for “peaceful disruptive action now” in response to so-called Israel’s illegal hijacking of the Global Sumud Flotilla, and their ongoing genocide in Gaza. In collaboration with fellow activists from the Belfast area, we attended a direct action blocking traffic at the junction of York Street and the A12.

    The group went on to highlight the abduction of Belfast-based activist Tom McCune, now at risk of torture in Israeli jail.  The statement urged:

    …everyone across this island to get involved in a sustained campaign of civil disobedience and disruption, exemplified by those in Italy who have brought that nation to a standstill.

    After around 40 minutes, the blockade dispersed, though reports from people around the city indicated the protest caused sustained disruption to traffic flow.  No arrests were made at the scene.

    Israeli Genocide Forces storm aid boats

    The illegal flotilla interception on Wednesday by the Israeli Genocide Forces (IGF) in international waters has resulted in an estimated 443 activists being abducted. Fears will grow for those being held, as the Netanyahu regime has sought to characterise the flotilla as a Hamas initiative.  Liberal use of the term applied to anyone the IGF bomb in Gaza has led to almost 700,000 Palestinians – mainly children – being murdered.

    The flotilla contained 44 boats, with a total of roughly 500 activists aboard.  Previous terrorist acts from the illegal settler-colonial regime had included dropping fire bombs and chemicals from drones on to the humanitarian vessels.  That didn’t work, and now Zionist naval forces have intervened directly, with shocking footage showing heavily armed IGF troops boarding, with weapons drawn, the boats carrying stocks of food and medicine.  Italy, Spain and Turkey had sent naval vessels to assist the flotilla, but turned away when the group of aid ships neared the high-risk zone approaching the Gaza coastline.

    That dereliction of duty by state functionaries is perhaps symbolic.  The flotilla was a powerful symbol of civil society taking over where governments have failed to act, and that spirit continued across the world.  In Ireland, Belfast wasn’t the only place taking action in response to this latest instance of Zionist criminality, as activists in Dublin have blocked the main port there.  Protests have erupted elsewhere, with multiple cities in Italy flooded by protestors.  The Guardian reported that:

    Hundreds of people gathered in front of Termini station in Rome, chanting: “Let’s block everything.” This led authorities to limit access and close some metro stops. Pro-Palestinian demonstrators marched in Milan, Turin and Genoa, while protesters in Naples and Pisa briefly occupied station platforms and blocked trains. Thousands also gathered in Bologna carrying banners and flags.

    Global protests show Zionist isolation

    A general strike has been called for Friday October 3, with the country’s prime minister Giorgia Meloni smearing the move as an excuse for a long weekend, saying:

    I would have expected that at least on such an important issue they would not have called a general strike on a Friday, because a long weekend and revolution don’t go together.

    Protestors blocked streets in Madrid, and demonstrations were also staged in other major cities such as Buenos Aires, London, Berlin and Brussels.

    Amnesty International spoke out against the flotilla attack saying:

    Israel’s forceful interception of the Global Sumud Flotilla vessels and detention of its crew off the coast of Gaza is a brazen assault against solidarity activists carrying out an entirely peaceful humanitarian mission. This seizure comes after weeks of threats and incitement by Israeli officials against the flotilla and its participants and after several attempts to sabotage some of its ships.

    The unlawful Zionist entity may come to rue its latest crime, however, as a regalvanised solidarity movement will now bring increased pressure on complicit governments to finally take meaningful steps to ostracise the terrorist regime.

    By Robert Freeman

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • “Israel Says” Is Not Journalism

    Five of the six journalists and cameramen killed by Israel on 10 August 2025

    Note added 1 October 2025:

    This alert was originally published on 14 August 2025. However, a technical problem prevented it from being shared via our usual email lists. This has now been fixed. Apologies for the delay in sending this out.

    Late last Sunday, a targeted Israeli attack killed prominent Al Jazeera journalist Anas al-Sharif alongside several colleagues. They were in a tent outside the main gate of Gaza City’s al-Shifa hospital. Also killed were Al Jazeera correspondent Mohammed Qreiqeh and camera operators Ibrahim Zaher and Mohammed Noufal, together with freelance cameraman Momen Aliwa and freelance journalist Mohammed al-Khalidi. Al-Sharif was previously part of a Reuters team that won a Pulitzer Prize in 2024.

    Western ‘mainstream’ news outlets prominently featured Israel’s claim that Anas al-Sharif was a Hamas operative. This televised BBC News segment was typical:

    ‘Israel says Anas Al-Sharif was a member of Hamas, a claim long rejected by the news network, his family, and the Committee to Protect Journalists.’

    Although scepticism was indicated, the Israeli propaganda claim skewed reporting by disrupting the reality that Israel had just deliberately murdered several journalists and media workers. This was exactly as Israel wished, diverting attention from its killings to addressing the presented ‘evidence’ of one victim being an active Hamas operative. This is part of a longstanding Israeli pattern of lies and deception since the genocide began in October 2023.

    Kenneth Roth, former executive director of Human Rights Watch, said:

    ‘Israel keeps killing journalists, usually accusing them of being part of Hamas’s military, rarely offering any proof beyond its own worthless assertions.’

    Irene Khan, the United Nations special rapporteur on freedom of opinion and expression, said:

    ‘This is a pattern the Israelis have used over the last 20 months…to assassinate and silence independent reporting on Gaza…they are running a carefully planned program of assassination.’

    The Financial Times had a straightforward headline: ‘Israel kills famous Al Jazeera reporter in Gaza’

    By contrast, the Daily Telegraph headlined: ‘Israel kills Al Jazeera journalist it accused of leading Hamas terror cell’

    There was a follow-up piece by the paper’s Jerusalem correspondent, Henry Bodkin: ‘Why Israel believes Al Jazeera reporter killed in Gaza was a terrorist’

    How does a journalist without mind-reading powers know what Israel ‘believes’, rather than what it claims or asserts?

    The Daily Mail included the Israeli claim in its headline: ‘Five Al Jazeera journalists are killed in Israeli strike on tent in Gaza: IDF says it was targeting and struck “Hamas cell leader posing as correspondent”’

    When not actually featured in newspaper headlines, Israel’s claim that Anas al-Sharif was active in a Hamas cell was prominent in reporting. The second line of a Sun news article was typical:

    ‘Anas al-Sharif, 28, was hit in the strike after the IDF claimed he was the “head of a terrorist cell in Hamas”.’

    The UK-based Centre for Media Monitoring (CfMM) noted of media coverage:

    ‘Unlike the FT, many major outlets have centred Israeli propaganda that Al Jazeera’s Anas al-Sharif was working for Hamas. Here’s how the media should be reporting things, beginning with the fact that Israel just killed four Al Jazeera journalists in a targeted strike.’

    CfMM then pointed out that media outlets should have provided basic context in their reporting, including:

     ‘- The timing of this attack (on the eve of its latest expected assault on Gaza)

    – Targeting of journalists not a one-off (some 240 killed by Israel so far – more than any other conflict)

    – Israel doesn’t allow foreign journalists into Gaza’

    Responsible journalism should also:

    ‘Humanise the victims. These journalists had been pivotal in sharing stories out of Gaza. Share their families’ and friends’ pain.’

    CfMM also observed that reporting should have indicated prominently that Israel had already threatened al-Sharif, and that the Committee to Protect Journalists had warned that any attack on journalists is clearly unacceptable.

    Finally, said CfMM, Israeli claims about al-Sharif needed to be put in proper perspective: that the claims are not supported by the ‘evidence’ presented.

    In fact, responsible journalists should go further and explain to audiences that Israel has a long history of lying, fabrication and deceit. Since the genocide began, there has been a litany of lies that the ‘mainstream’ media have propagated and, when exposed, ignored or downplayed. Mehdi Hasan, founder of independent outlet Zeteo, powerfully debunked ten of the most egregious Israeli lies in a clip lasting just three minutes:

    In summary, ‘Israel’s top 10 lies about its Gaza genocide’ presented by Hasan are:

    1. Hamas systematically steals aid coming into Gaza.

    2. It’s all about the hostages, i.e. if Hamas released the hostages, Israel would stop the genocide.

    3. 40 beheaded babies, and babies in ovens or hung on clotheslines.

    4. Mass rape on 7 October 2023 as a weapon of war.

    5. Hamas ‘command and control centre’ under Al-Shifa hospital.

    6. A schedule found for Hamas guards in Rantisi hospital (it was an Arabic calendar).

    7. UNRWA, the UN relief agency for Palestinians, is a front for Hamas.

    8. You cannot trust the ‘Hamas-controlled’ health ministry.

    9. Israel didn’t kill those 15 aid workers or 100 people waiting for flour.

    10. Hamas uses human shields.

    Following Israel’s targeted killing of Al Jazeera’s entire reporting team in Gaza City, Muhammad Shehada, a Gazan political analyst and Visiting Fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, created this new brief summary of Israeli lies. Running at just over two minutes, Shehada observed that he kept going until he ran out of breath, but barely scratched the surface of Israeli deceit.

    In his introduction, he said:

    ‘One thing that you need to keep in mind is that Israel has been lying incessantly since the beginning of the genocide. It’s been the cornerstone of Israel’s genocidal campaign to lie every single day about everything possible.’⁠

    Other than the Israeli lies cited by Hasan above, examples given by Shehada included: Israeli use of white phosphorus weapons; deliberately starving Gazans; gassing Israeli hostages; killing women and children with white flags; mass rape of Palestinians; non-existent tunnels under graveyards; Israeli snipers targeting children in the head; breaking the ceasefire; blowing up Gazans fleeing south; blowing up and destroying Kamal Adwan hospital; claiming that dead Gazan children are fake plastic dolls; creating alleged safe zones that they push people into and then bomb; Red Crescent staff participated in the 7 October attacks; designating journalists as Hamas militants (such as al-Sharif); Hamas hid giant supplies of fuel under Rafah; and on and on.

    In conclusion, said Shehada:

    ‘You should attach as much value to Israel’s allegations about Anas al-Sharif, as to the dust on the floor.’

    Western Media Complicity in the Slaughter of Journalists

    You might think that, with so much evidence of Israeli deception and outright lies, journalists would treat Israeli claims with extreme scepticism, while explaining to audiences why. This should especially apply to BBC News, the national broadcaster that is funded by a public licence fee and which is supposed to uphold the highest journalistic values as enshrined in the corporation’s Editorial Guidelines, and promised by its Royal Charter.

    Of course, as is widely known by now, the credibility of BBC News has nosedived since the genocide began and there has even been significant discontent within its own newsrooms.

    How did the BBC treat Israel’s targeted killing of Anas al-Sharif and his Al Jazeera colleagues in Gaza City? As we saw earlier, BBC news broadcasts prominently featured wording such as, ‘Israel says Anas Al-Sharif was a member of Hamas’.

    When the BBC interviewed Martin Roux, head of the crisis desk at Reporters Without Borders, the BBC presenter inevitably began with, ‘Israel says…’.

    Here is another BBC example that was broadcast live:

    ‘Let’s bring in our colleague Yolande Knell who is in Jerusalem. The accusation from Israel is that Anas al Sharif had a dual role, he was both in their words journalist and terrorist…’

    There followed almost two minutes of bland, emotionless newspeak from Knell with only perfunctory scepticism about Israeli claims, and zero context about the longstanding Israeli pattern of denials, deceits and deceptions.

    As media activist Saul Staniforth noted:

    ‘The IDF assassinated him. Now the BBC assassinates his character.’

    The flagship BBC News at Ten actually broadcast a segment in which BBC correspondent Jon Donnison, reporting from Jerusalem, made this outrageous observation:

    ‘There’s the question of proportionality. Is it justified to kill five journalists when you were only targeting one?’

    As Jonathan Cook noted, the comment was ‘obscene’. If you cannot grasp that, imagine that five well-known BBC journalists were killed in a targeted Russian strike inside Ukraine: perhaps Jeremy Bowen, Lyse Doucet, Yolande Knell, Lucy Williamson and Jon Donnison working together from a makeshift base in Ukraine. Imagine that one of them, Donnison perhaps, had allegedly been secretly working for Ukraine, passing on intelligence information about Russian troop movements. If all five had been killed in a Russian attack, would that have been framed in BBC reporting as:

    ‘There’s the question of proportionality. Is it justified to kill five journalists when you were only targeting one?’

    Of course not.

    Consider also a press review segment on Sky News in which one of their journalists extensively recounted Israel’s claims about Anas al-Sharif’s active Hamas involvement ‘at the time of his elimination’, followed by:

    ‘Sharif himself had denied it. Al Jazeera deny it too. So, you know, you’re left with two sides here again’.

    As journalist Afshin Rattansi, Going Underground presenter, observed:

    ‘The two sides:

    ‘An ethno-state perpetrating genocide that lies as much as it kills

    ‘A slain journalist who has shown the horrors of the genocide

    ‘And there’s “journalists” seemingly still can’t figure out that Israel had every motivation to kill a Palestinian journalist to stop him from showing the world the horror of the genocide they are perpetrating…

    ‘Bear in mind these people are paid well to be this awful at their jobs’

    Karishma Patel, a former BBC News journalist who resigned over the broadcaster’s biased coverage of Gaza, said on X:

    ‘For nearly 2 years, I have been asking @BBCNews to critically engage with its sources over Gaza. Israel is a bad source. Uncritically repeating its claims, even with the caveat that they’re denied, is not journalism. Do your job. Verify.’

    She continued, addressing the BBC:

    ‘You have put Palestinian lives at risk by legitimising Israeli claims that have laid the groundwork for its attacks. You have created the conditions under which Israel could kill AJ’s entire team in Gaza City. All you have ever had to do was follow the evidence.’

    Journalist and documentary filmmaker Richard Sanders observed:

    ‘Israel last night murdered the entire Al Jazeera team in Gaza City. Western media should long ago have united to bring serious pressure on the Israelis to end the slaughter of journalists. Their failure to do so makes them complicit.’

    Al Jazeera noted recently that Israel has killed nearly 270 journalists and media workers since 7 October 2023, listing all their names here.

    ‘An Insult to Journalism and a Stamp of Disgrace for Humanity’

    Tanya Haj-Hassan, a Toronto-based paediatric intensive care and humanitarian doctor who has worked in Gaza, told the UN last November:

    ‘Incredible Palestinian journalists covering the genocide of their own people have been repeatedly targeted by Israel and discredited, while both their reporting and their murder[s] have been largely ignored by mainstream Western media.’

    She added:

    ‘Spend just five minutes in a hospital there [in Gaza] and it will become painfully clear that Palestinians are being intentionally massacred, starved and stripped of everything needed to sustain human life’.

    The public have been moved by such authoritative testimony from many doctors, as well as countless, extremely harrowing scenes of devastation and suffering from Gaza, and are well aware that ‘mainstream’ media are protecting Israel. Reporting from a protest in Washington DC for Al Jazeera English, Shihab Rattansi said:

    ‘Several hundred demonstrators gathered outside the headquarters of various media organisations in this building: NBC, Fox News, ITN, the Guardian. They say that their coverage of the Gaza genocide has given Israel the room to kill so many, and notably so many journalists.’

    Rattansi added of the protesters:

    ‘They’re trying to disrupt the narratives that are being told on these programmes. That message is, “Look, you’re no longer the gatekeepers. We know what’s happening in Gaza. We know about the genocide, despite your best efforts.”’

    Mariam Barghouti, a US-born Palestinian journalist and policy analyst, stated via X:

    ‘We are no longer waiting for international journalists to condemn Israeli practices against children, civilians, and their own peers.

    ‘We condemn these journalists in their entirety. We condemn them for their journalistic malpractice, their ineptitude to fulfill their obligation to the world, and for engineering the narrative of victimhood for Israel.’

    Barghouti added:

    ‘From correspondents to editors to producers, across Sky news to CNN, BBC, NYT and others. You’re an insult to journalism, and a stamp of disgrace for humanity.

    ‘You have wielded so much power, and at every juncture chose to abuse it. And here we emphasize and remember, it was a choice, because real journalists- like those in Gaza,- did not acquiesce and chose to report the truth even as their body began to eat itself from hunger & the bombs rained on them.’

    Hind Khoudary, a Palestinian journalist based in Gaza, said:

    ‘I will not speak to foreign media about the killing of Palestinian journalists.

    ‘I will not sit on your global channels to be part of a segment you’ll forget by tomorrow.

    ‘To you, we are just a headline — a tragedy to consume, not colleagues to defend.

    ‘We are being hunted and killed in Gaza while you watch in silence. For two years, your fellow journalists here have been slaughtered. What did you do?

    ‘Nothing.

    ‘Or maybe it’s because we are Palestinian journalists — we don’t count as “real” colleagues in your eyes.’

    Perhaps it is also because Palestinians are presented by western media as lesser humans than the rest of us.

    Investigative journalist Matt Kennard has raised serious questions for well over a year about British complicity, indeed participation, in Israel’s Gaza genocide. Together with Palestine Deep Dive and Declassified UK, he has reported UK spy flights over Gaza: something the ‘mainstream’ media, in part, has only recently addressed (although notably not the BBC, so far).

    Kennard noted via X on 11 August:

    ‘Likely that UK had a mercenary spy plane in the sky over Gaza when Israel targeted and killed 5 Al Jazeera journalists, including Anas al-Sharif, last night. The intelligence gathered by this plane goes directly to Israeli military in real-time. How long will we tolerate this?’

    Declassified UK noted that the Hind Rajab Foundation has now identified Israeli air force commander Tomer Bar as one of those responsible for killing the Al Jazeera team in Gaza. Last month, Declassified UK revealed that Keir Starmer’s government had allowed Bar to visit Britain in July. He reportedly met with RAF commanders and attended the Royal International Air Tattoo event. Around the same time, air chief marshal Sir Rich Knighton, head of the RAF, was confronted by Phil Miller of Declassified UK:

    ‘Why are you still sharing intelligence with Benjamin Netanyahu while he’s wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes in Gaza?’

    Knighton refused to answer while his colleague, squadron leader Ryan Kerr, repeatedly tried to stop the interview by shoving Miller.

    How long will ‘mainstream’ British journalists treat Israeli claims with minimal scepticism, indeed repeat and amplify Israeli lies and deceits?

    How long will the British media broadcast Benjamin Netanyahu’s words, without pointing out that he is wanted by the ICC for war crimes and crimes against humanity?

    How long will UK media outlets soft-pedal challenges to Keir Starmer, David Lammy and other government ministers over their role in the Gaza genocide?

    History will condemn them all.

    The post “Israel Says” Is Not Journalism first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Israel only allows 10% of required aid into Gaza as it starves Palestine

    The Government Media Office in the Gaza Strip revealed that during September 2025, the Israeli occupation allowed only 1,824 aid trucks to enter. Crucially, this was a fraction of the approximately 18,000 trucks needed to meet the humanitarian needs of more than 2.4 million citizens in the Strip. It’s equivalent to only 10% of the minimum required, amid a blockade that has been ongoing for more than seven months.

    Israel continues systematically starving Gaza with ceaseless aid blockades

    The statement described this policy as part of a “systematic plan to engineer starvation and chaos”, in which the occupation prevents the entry of sufficient quantities of aid and continues to close vital crossings. This includes the completely closed Zikim Crossing in the north. And, in addition to that , there have been repeated closures of the Kissufim and Karam Abu Salem crossings. The blockades are hindering the regular arrival of humanitarian supplies.

    The media office noted that trucks that were allowed to enter were subjected to looting and theft as a result of the “artificial security chaos” imposed by the occupation in an attempt to undermine the resilience and will of the Palestinian people, by plunging the Strip into complex crises.

    The media office confirmed that the occupation authorities have continued to impose a tight siege on the Gaza Strip for more than seven months. Israel has pursued policies of systematic restriction on the entry of aid, including the complete closure of the Zikim Crossing, and repeated closures of the Kissufim and Karam Abu Salem crossings, which has caused an almost complete disruption of food, medicine and other basic supplies.

    More than 430 food items banned

    The report noted that the occupation prevents the entry of more than 430 types of basic food items. This includes meat, dairy products, fish, fruit, vegetables and nutritional supplements, as well as other items necessary for the health of pregnant people and patients. This is exacerbating the humanitarian crisis in the Strip.

    The office stated that the minimum needs of the Gaza Strip’s population of more than 2.4 million require the entry of about 600 aid trucks daily, at a time when Gaza is suffering from a near-total collapse of its infrastructure and a sharp deterioration in living conditions due to the ongoing war.

    According to the report, the poverty rate in Gaza has exceeded 95%. It means that the vast majority of the population is unable to purchase basic commodities, even if they are partially available on the market, which has made food and health security virtually non-existent for most families.

    The Government Media Office blamed the Israeli occupation authorities and their allies, led by the US, for the worsening humanitarian crisis in Gaza. It called on the United Nations (UN), international institutions, and Arab and Islamic countries to intervene immediately. It urged them to exert pressure on Israel to permanently open the crossings and ensure the flow of humanitarian aid, including food, baby milk, and life-saving medicines.

    Feature image via Al Jazeera English/Youtube.

    By Alaa Shamali

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • As Israel illegally abducts the flotilla activists, the public plan mass protests UK-wide

    Protesters across the UK are gearing up to stand in solidarity with the Global Sumud Flotilla. Overnight, Israel has kidnapped nearly 500 pro-Palestine activists aboard the fleet sailing in international waters.

    Updates on the Global Sumud Flotilla now show that Israel has likely illegally intercepted the majority of the vessels sailing to Gaza to break the violent colonial occupier’s siege on the Strip. Currently, it’s displaying that Israeli naval ships and speedboats have committed the blatant act of piracy against 21 ships in the 44-strong fleet. A further 19 are presumed to have been intercepted.

    However, despite abducting more than 400 peaceful activists from 44 countries, carrying urgently needed food, baby formula, and other basic necessities to Gaza, governments around the world have so far done nothing to protect their citizens from the terrorist state.

    Instead, as ever, it’s up to ordinary citizens to school their governments on moral integrity – and international law.

    UK-wide protests in solidarity with the humanitarian flotilla

    The Global Sumud Flotilla and Global Movement to Gaza have called for mass demonstrations across the UK on Thursday 2 October:

     

    View this post on Instagram

     

    A post shared by Talk is I’m TBE (@zak.ovo)

    Already, it has organised protests for the following locations at 5.30pm:

    • London – Kings Cross Station
    • London – Liverpool Street Station Station
    • Birmingham – Birmingham New Street Station
    • Kent – Dartford Station
    • Glasgow – Glasgow Central Station
    • Manchester – Manchester Piccadilly Station
    • Leeds – Leeds Station
    • Cardiff – Cardiff Central
    • Edinburgh – Edinburgh Waverley Station
    • Southampton – Southampton Central

    The action is aiming to #ShutItDown at each location to demand protection of the Global Sumud Flotilla. The groups are urging people to turn out in Palestinian flag colours and call for an end to Israel’s siege and occupation. They’re also asking for people across the UK to set up further demos in their town or city in defiance of the Labour Party government’s active participation in Israel’s ongoing genocide and ethnic cleansing in Palestine.

    The protests will join a sweep of demonstrations across countries far-and-wide. Members of the public across cities throughout Italy, France, Spain, Germany, Belgium, Greece, Turkey, Jordan, and Tunisia have stood up against the apartheid entity’s illegal seizure and detention of the international activists:

    After the Italian navy abandoned the fleet, Italy’s unions called for industrial action and to “block everything” for the flotilla. True to their word, the country’s union has announced a general strike and have set about blocking everything as pledged:

    In the UK on the evening of 1 October, London saw protesters take to the streets with fireworks, flags, and megaphones calling for a free Palestine. They marched with a large banner shaming prime minister Keir Starmer as a war criminal complicit in arming genocidal and war criminal Israel:

    UK citizens abducted: the government must act

    Many UK citizens are aboard the flotilla. Ahead of the interception, they urged the UK government to act to prevent Israel hijacking their vessels:

    At present, because Israel has cut communications on the vessels, their whereabouts and wellbeing is unknown. Naturally, governments quick to preserve Israeli impunity, have been silent on it abducting their citizens in international waters.

    Of course, after (largely Western) world leaders have watched on as Israel have carried out a grotesque livestreamed genocide, their failure to act is hardly surprising. They’ve ignored Israel’s flagrant acts of terrorist aggression in numerous drone attacks on the flotilla to date.

    However, despite Israel’s repeated threats, the Global Sumud Flotilla were true to their ‘steadfast’ name. They refused to stop sailing towards Gaza. Now, one vessel – Mikeno – has broken the Israeli blockade and entered Palestinian waters. As of 8.21am UTC (9.21am GMT) it was continuing towards the Strip.

    So as protesters around the world raise their voice in solidarity with the detained activists, all eyes will continue to be on Gaza – and the Mikeno – sailing with the hopes of millions demanding a free Palestine behind it.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Hannah Sharland

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Tory peer Kneecaps himself with ludicrous terror trial complaints

    You would think the British (in)justice system had embarrassed itself enough at this point, what with charging peaceful protestors under terror law for objecting to a genocide, alongside a farcical trial involving Kneecap rapper Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh and a piece of apparently terrifying yellow cloth. However, it’s the collapse of the latter trial – rather than its absurd existence in the first place – that has irked Shadow Attorney General David Wolfson.

    The unelected House of Lords life peer – who Britons will subsidise with £371 per day plus expenses until the day he kicks the bucket – has decided to waste public money by using his time to encourage senior legal figures to piss away yet more of Britons’ cash on resurrecting the failed proceedings against the West Belfast band member.

    Writing to current Attorney General (AG) Richard Hermer, Wolfson raged that the technical errors leading to the prosecution falling through had:

    …undermined confidence in the administration of justice.

    The failure to make an example of Liam Óg aka Mo Chara was due to the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) not gaining consent to proceed from the AG prior to the expiration of a six-month deadline. The alleged offence, involving the display of a Hezbollah flag on stage, was committed on November 21. The Lebanese resistance group are a proscribed organisation under British anti-terror laws. The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) authorised the police to press charges on May 21, but did not receive approval from the AG until the next day, by which time the deadline for consent had elapsed.

    Incompetence, ‘hard left’ ideology or…common sense?

    In an irate tweet, he asked:

    Why was the most senior law officer in govt not across a high-profile terrorism case? Lord Hermer has either displayed breathtaking incompetence or his hard left politics have influenced his conduct. He brings fresh embarrassment to the Government every day.

    Questioning Hermer in the letter, Wolfson’s queries seem to further imply his belief in the above, as he asks:

    On what date and time was your office first asked to give consent to prosecute Mr Ó hAnnaidh under section 13 of the Terrorism Act? And on what date and time did you provide consent?

    He goes on to demand either an appeal or a retrial take place:

    Do you intend to support the CPS in seeking an appeal to the Divisional Court or an application to the Court of Appeal Criminal Division of venire de novo so that the case can be brought back before the courts? If not, please explain why, bearing in mind the serious nature of the alleged offence and the public interest.

    A reminder – the “serious…offence” alleged was a flag being waved around. It’s hard to imagine anything more destructive to faith in the “administration of justice” than a shadow AG who expresses more concern about an apparently errant bit of cloth than he does for the real support of terrorism. Or, perhaps own party’s backing for so-called Israel’s genocide in Gaza would do it.

    Wolfson also proudly displayed his letters to Stephen Parkinson, DPP and Anthony Rogers, Chief Inspector of the Crown Prosecution Service.  Parkinson was asked whether the CPS had become aware of the offence “close to the time limit”, and whether they’d done anything to:

    expedite matters so that consent could be obtained at short notice

    The reality is that no interest had been taken in Kneecap’s prior antics until Zionist fulminating over their support for Palestine started to reach fever pitch.  After their Coachella performance attracted the fury of Gaza genocide enthusiasts, the same ghouls began trawling through old tweets and videos of the hip-hop trio. Footage emerged of a November 2023 gig, where they said:

    The only good Tory is a dead Tory. Kill your local MP.

    While the above might be an effective cost saving measure against the likes of David Wolfson, frugality was not foremost in the minds of Kneecap’s detractors. Further searches dredged up the flag footage, and it was at this point that prosecutors started to take an interest. So a politically motivated witch hunt, but was it ended by opposing ideological interests in the form of AG Hermer?

    Zionist rag rails against basic decency

    The Jewish Chronicle certainly takes a dim view of the man, which is about as ringing an endorsement as any civilised person might hope to receive. The Zionist rag rails against the current AG for giving his backing to local councils having the right to boycott the pseudo-state squatting on Palestine. They go on to accuse him of endangering Jewish people by backing ICC warrants for war criminals Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, and for backing cessation of arms exports to the Zionist regime. The only endangering of Jewish people going on here is the Chronicle’s anti-Semitic conflation of that population in general with the butchers of the Israeli genocide forces and their leadership.

    We may never know if Hermer’s late consent was incompetence or ideology. Perhaps a third possibility exists – that he sought to save the British legal system further humiliation, and allow it to focus its attention on actual criminals, rather than those backing the benighted people of Palestine.

    Featured image via YouTube screenshot/Steven Winston

    By Robert Freeman

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • BREAKING: four humanitarian boats still sailing toward Gaza, one within an hour of coast

    Four vessels of the flotilla of almost fifty volunteer humanitarian boats are still free and moving toward Gaza after a night of Israeli attacks in international waters. One of the boats is within an hour of the coast, but has been stationary for an hour now and has probably been attacked and boarded:

    The Rachel Corrie, named after an American activist murdered by Israel in 2003, has just entered Gaza’s territorial waters.

    By Skwawkbox

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • 3 Egyptian activists disappear en route to join humanitarian flotilla

    Three Egyptian activists who were en route to join the Egyptian section of the humanitarian Global Sumud Flotilla sailing to Gaza have disappeared without trace, according to organisers.

    The last reported sighting of the activists was in the early hours of Tuesday morning. Organiser Ziad Bassioni said that their families reported that they failed to return home and have not been heard from since. Organisers believe the disappearances are linked to their planned participation in the flotilla.

    Flotilla disappearance

    In a statement, the flotilla group denounced the presumed detention as “unjustifiable” and condemned Egypt’s repeated refusal to grant official permission to take part.

    Organisers have also lost contact with the owner of one of the five vessels designated for the flotilla, with local media claiming he withdrew after “threats and security pressure”.

    On Wednesday night, Israel launched a mass attack, involving at least twelve military vessels, on the flotilla – mining the waters around the volunteer fleet and detaining crews. Workers in Italy have called a new general strike in response to the country’s navy – two warships supposedly sent to protect the fleet – abandoning the humanitarian boats and their crews.

    Featured image via YouTube screenshot/Associated Press

    By Skwawkbox

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Freedom Flotilla and Thousand Madleens refuse to stop sailing to Gaza

    The Freedom Flotilla Coalition (FFC), which has sent humanitarian vessels on earlier attempts to reach Gaza with aid, and the new Thousand Madleens mass group of boats – named after one of the FFC vessels attacked and seized by Israel – have said they will not stop sailing to Gaza, despite Israel’s mass, criminal attack on the Gaza Sumud Flotilla’s fifty ships and their volunteer crews on Wednesday night.

    In a joint statement, the groups said:

    Israel has illegally attacked the Global Sumud Flotilla, sailing to challenge Israel’s illegal blockade of Gaza. Communications have gone dark, cameras are offline and the flotilla’s boats are being boarded by armed and masked commando forces. This is yet another breach of international law – an attempt to silence those who dare confront Israel’s genocide of the Palestinian people, while governments shield Israel with diplomatic cover and military aid.

    We name this for what it is: impunity, made possible by political cowardice and complicity.

    The Freedom Flotilla Coalition and Thousand Madleens to Gaza stand firmly in solidarity with the Global Sumud Flotilla and every human rights defender aboard. Their actions are part of a collective refusal to accept the siege of Gaza as normal. Their presence on those boats is a reminder that silence is not an option, and that people across the world are choosing to act.

    We will not stop.
    We will keep sailing.
    We will continue challenging Israel’s illegal blockade.
    We will keep confronting genocide, apartheid, occupation, and mass starvation— until Gaza is free, and justice is no longer a dream but reality.

    Featured image via YouTube screenshot/Freedom Flotilla Coalition

    By Skwawkbox

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Italy’s unions call new general strike over Israel’s attack on Sumud Flotilla

    The Italian government and navy have abandoned the Gaza-bound humanitarian ‘Global Sumud Flotilla’ as Israel attacked the aid boats overnight. But the Italian working class has reacted in outrage at the scandal, gathering in the streets in protest across Italy and announcing new industrial action in response:

    Workers, let by Genoa’s Dockworkers’ Union (CALP) have called a new nationwide general strike for Friday like the twenty-four hour 22 September strike that paralysed the whole country and forced Italy’s far-right government to send two naval vessels in the first place. The unions had promised to “block everything” if Italy failed to protect the flotilla from Israel.

    Featured image via YouTube screenshot/Reuters

    By Skwawkbox

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Israeli attack on the Global Solidarity Flotilla sparks furious protests

    Israeli occupation forces have attacked 13 boats from the Global Solidarity Flotilla as they headed towards the Gaza Strip. The flotilla is carrying activists and humanitarian aid aimed at breaking the blockade imposed on the Strip for years. Overnight, the flotilla organisers confirmed that 30 other boats are still sailing towards Gaza, despite the Israeli attack.

    Flotilla attack sparks widespread global anger

    The Israeli attack has sparked widespread anger in several countries around the world. Emotional mass demonstrations in Europe, including Greece, Spain, Sweden, Belgium and Italy, have spread organically. In Germany, protesters closed the main train station. Meanwhile, in Geneva, Switzerland, there were widespread calls for demonstrations. In Britain, hundreds of people are expected to take to the streets of London and marched to the Prime Minister’s residence, chanting slogans condemning the attack.

    The protests also spread to Latin America, with marches in Mexico and Argentina, while regional governments condemned the attack in the strongest terms. In Turkey, a demonstration in Istanbul quickly took hold.

    Official condemnations and diplomatic moves

    At the official level, reactions condemning the Israeli attack poured in, with Bolivian President Luis Arce describing the attack as “brutal” and “a flagrant violation of international law,” stressing that “silence is complicity” and calling for global mobilisation to confront “this new brutality.”

    In a notable diplomatic escalation, Colombian President Gustavo Petro announced the expulsion of all remaining members of the Israeli diplomatic mission in his country, considering what happened to be an “international crime.” He also revealed that Israel had detained two Colombian women while they were aboard the flotilla in international waters and demanding their immediate release.

    This move is an extension of Colombia’s hardline stance, having previously severed diplomatic ties with Tel Aviv in 2024 in protest against the war on Gaza, while maintaining limited consular representation.

    For its part, the French Foreign Ministry announced that it was closely monitoring the movements of the Steadfast Fleet, stressing that the safety of French citizens participating in the convoy was a “top priority.”

    Venezuela condemned the Israeli attack as “cowardly piracy” and a systematic means of starvation and extermination, noting that “the real threat to world peace is Zionism,” which it described as “a racist colonial ideology that violates international law.”

    For its part, the Chilean government expressed its deep concern, considering the interception of the ships a violation of freedom of navigation and the law of the sea, and called on Israel to respect international humanitarian law and protect the fleet’s crews and volunteers.

    The Iranian Foreign Ministry also condemned the attack, calling it an “act of terrorism” and a “flagrant violation of international law,” asserting that the occupation continues its policies of ethnic cleansing, which must be held accountable internationally.

    Arab positions: Calls for criminalisation and urgent action

    In Tunisia, Hamma Hammami, secretary-general of the Workers’ Party, called for escalating popular pressure, including surrounding the US embassy in the country, demanding the immediate criminalisation of normalisation and asserting that what happened was “a crime that began in Tunisia,” in reference to the participation of Tunisian activists in the flotilla.

    In Algeria, the Algerian Coordination for the Support of the Palestinian People called for urgent official action by the government and the need to intensify diplomatic efforts to confront repeated Zionist attacks and support the Palestinian right to end the siege and occupation.

    Featured image via YouTube screenshot/Guardian News

    By Alaa Shamali

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Global Sumud Flotilla Boats Being Stolen By Israeli Occupying Forces

    Below are Instagram posts from the Global Sumud Flotilla regarding their interception by the Israeli Occupying Forces. This is an evolving situation. Below those is an article from The Cradle about an earlier failed attempt to intercept the Flotilla. In response to this illegal attack on the Flotilla, masses of people are protesting throughout the European Union. Here is a call to action for people in the United States from Veterans For Peace (VFP). Members of VFP are on the Global Sumud Flotilla.

    Veterans For Peace has put together a Rapid Response toolkit, and we encourage EVERYBODY to start taking action NOW, or to be preparing your chapter to take action.

    VFP members have prepared THREE levels of Rapid Response- Green, Yellow and Red.

    The post Global Sumud Flotilla Boats Being Stolen By Israeli Occupying Forces appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • The Gaza ‘Peace Plan’: A Neo-Colonial Takeover

    After nearly two years of the most horrific live-streamed genocide in history, the majority of the world’s eight billion people, shocked and appalled to varying degrees, want nothing less than an end to the ceaseless murder of Palestinian civilians and the total eradication of the Gaza Strip, the provision of humanitarian aid and medical supplies in vast quantities, and the reconstruction of Gaza.

    They — we — also want the establishment of Palestinian autonomy so thorough that Israel can no longer treat Palestinians as vermin to be slaughtered in the pursuit of the malignant dream that has been the driver of its existence since its blood-soaked founding 77 years ago — the total control of all Palestinian land, and the complete subjugation, disappearance or extermination of the entire Palestinian population.

    The post The Gaza ‘Peace Plan’: A Neo-Colonial Takeover appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Internal Power And External Dependency In The Recognition Of The State Of Palestine

    Two years on from Al Aqsa Flood, and its historic significance only deepens. The question of Palestine assuming centre stage at the 2025 UN General Assembly cannot be delinked from the crisis that Al Aqsa Flood has imposed upon zionism and the broader Western world order.[1] The prominence of Palestine at this year’s UNGA is all the more striking given that, just two years earlier, Netanyahu stood before the same body to gloat about the supposed “end” of the Palestinian question and the normalization of zionist relations with Arab states.[2]

    The Palestinian question at the UNGA centered, most notably, on the recognition of the State of Palestine by several major Western powers.

    The post Internal Power And External Dependency In The Recognition Of The State Of Palestine appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Exposing JFK Airport’s Hidden Arms Pipeline To Israel

    On July 16, 2025, a Boeing 747 operated by Challenge Airlines lifted off from JFK Airport in New York. The cargo manifest listed a 347-kilogram shipment from Lockheed Martin. Inside was a BRU-68 bomb release unit, a mechanism that allows an F-35 fighter jet to drop 2,000-pound bombs.

    The flight’s final stop was Nevatim Air Base in southern Israel, home to the F-35I fleet bombing Gaza.

    This was not an isolated transfer. Internal shipping records shared by the Palestinian Youth Movement, and cross-referenced with public flight-tracking data, reveal a steady flow of U.S.-made weapons components moving from New York to Israel. Parts for fighter jets, missile launchers, and ammunition have routinely left JFK on commercial cargo flights while Israel’s air campaign destroys homes, schools, and hospitals.

    The post Exposing JFK Airport’s Hidden Arms Pipeline To Israel appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Dockworkers Across Europe Meet To Call A General Strike For Gaza

    In a union hall overlooking the sea and stacks of shipping containers in the Port of Genoa, delegations of dockworkers from both sides of the Mediterranean gathered — answering the call of their colleagues in Genoa — for an international assembly. The objective: to organize against the genocide in Palestine and Israel’s rearmament, building on the day of strikes and mobilizations that shook Italy on September 22.

    It was with emotion that Giovanni Ceravolo, a leader in the Unione Sindacale di Base (USB) for the port of Livorno, concluded this international meeting:

    We will be able to call for a first day of Europe-wide mobilization against weapons, against genocide, against rearmament. All this embodies our future tasks. The assemblies that brought us together these two days are the first step.

    The post Dockworkers Across Europe Meet To Call A General Strike For Gaza appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Palestinian Subordination: Donald Trump’s Gaza Peace Plan

    He had moments of discomfort and embarrassment – pressed into calling the Qatari Prime Minister by his host to apologise for striking Doha and made to pay lip service to the prospect of a Palestinian state – but Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu had many reasons to be pleased. On September 29, President Donald Trump advanced a peace proposal that essentially preserves Israeli pre-eminence regarding the fate of Palestinians, though it entails a cessation of hostilities, an affirmation that Gazans would not be expelled (those leaving would have the right to return), and an injunction against Israeli annexation of the Strip. But Hamas, militarily and politically, would have to surrender all claims, with the Palestinian Authority shepherded and supervised by foreign powers.

    Trump’s peace proposal comprises twenty points. They include a “deradicalized terror-free zone”, Gaza’s redevelopment for the benefit of its people aided by “a panel of experts who have helped birth some of the thriving miracle cities in the Middle East”, and an immediate end to the war on its acceptance by the parties. Israel would withdraw to an agreed upon line in anticipation of a hostage release, during which all military operations would cease pending complete withdrawal. All hostages, dead and alive, would be returned within 72 hours, to be followed by the release of 250 Palestinian life sentence prisoners and Gazans detained since October 7, 2023.

    Hamas and militant factions will forfeit any role in governing Gaza, with any offensive infrastructure and equipment destroyed, but any of its members wishing to commit to “peaceful co-existence” and decommissioning of weapons will be granted amnesty, with those wishing to leave given safe passage to receiving countries. Compliance by the militant group will be overseen by “regional partners”. Full aid would resume, with the UN and Red Crescent restored to their role as chief distributors.

    On the issue of governance, a temporary technocratic “apolitical Palestinian committee” of qualified Palestinians and “international experts” would form a temporary transitional body, subject to a “Board of Peace” personally chaired by Trump. Most unfortunately, it is likely to include such figures as Sir Tony Blair, the Middle East’s typhoid Mary when it comes to peace. The transitional authority would hold the reins till reforms by the Palestinian Authority had been completed. With immediacy, however, the US would work with Arab and international partners to deploy an “International Stabilisation Force” to Gaza. The ISF will be responsible for training Palestinian police forces and provide support in terms of vetting recruits, with assistance from Jordan and Egypt.

    The proposal clearly envisages a significant role for the ISF, though says about who will comprise it. Israel will not, under the plan, occupy or annex Gaza, surrendering what territory it has taken to the ISF. Even if Hamas were to delay or reject the proposal, the Israeli Defense Forces would still hand over occupied territory of “terror-free areas” to the stabilisation force but retain a security perimeter to stem “any resurgent terror threat.”

    The plan also envisages the establishment of an interfaith dialogue to promote the values of peace between the parties, and a “credible pathway to Palestinian self-determination and statehood” if the programs for Gaza’s redevelopment and PA reform take place as planned. A vague US promise to “establish a dialogue” between Israel and the Palestinians regarding peaceful and prosperous co-existence rounds off the points.

    There was palpable grumbling from the Israeli camp. Netanyahu undoubtedly harbours ambitions of finishing “the job”, and there is little to say the war will not resume once the Israeli hostages are returned. Having previously rejected any governing role of the Palestinian Authority in Gaza, he now reluctantly accepts the idea subject to a “radical and genuine overhaul” of the body.

    Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, one of the right-wing heavies in the Israeli cabinet, is threatening to withdraw his Religious Zionist Party from the coalition. Agreeing with the plan had been “an act of wilful blindness that ignores every lesson of October 7.” It would only “end in tears.” Fellow zealot, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, is also likely to be seething.

    Opposition leader Yair Lapid is also suspicious of Netanyahu, who tends to say “yes” when visiting Washington, “standing in front of the cameras at the White house, feeling like a breakthrough statesman.” On returning to Israel, however, he always seemed to add a qualifying “but”, his political base always reminding him “who the boss is.”

    In keeping with history, the Trump plan, even if it were to be implemented to the letter, enshrines the essential subordination of Palestinian goals to the dictates of other powers. Palestinian military presence is not only to be curtailed but essentially eliminated altogether. Hamas, never consulted regarding the peace terms, is to accept its own effacing. The PA is to accept its own subservience and infantilisation. The Gazans are also to accept an economic and development program dictated and directed from without. Statehood is to be kept in cold storage till appropriate, controlled conditions for its release are approved – and certainly not by the Palestinians themselves. They, it would seem, remain the considered errant children of international relations, mistrusted and requiring permanent, stern invigilation.

    The post Palestinian Subordination: Donald Trump’s Gaza Peace Plan first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • US veterans’ final message from the Global Sumud Flotilla before being intercepted by Israel

    Peace activists sailing to Gaza with the Global Sumud Flotilla reported Wednesday evening that Israeli naval ships had begun intercepting vessels in their fleet and arresting flotilla members. On Tuesday, just hours before the flotilla entered the “high-risk zone” near the shores of Gaza, Marc Steiner spoke with Phillip Tottenham and Jessica Coltfelter, two US Marine Corps veterans sailing with the flotilla. In this episode of The Marc Steiner Show, Tottenham and Coltfelter discuss why they, as veterans, felt compelled to join this humanitarian mission, and what message they wanted to share with the world in the event of their capture—or worse—by Israel.

    Guests:

    • Philip Tottenham is a US Marine Corps veteran, a member of Veterans For Peace, and a peace and human rights activist.
    • Jessica Coltfelter, is a US Marine Corps veteran (2008-2012) who served as security detail for Presidential Helicopter Squadron Marine One and, upon End of Active Service, worked as a defense contractor for Triple Canopy. Refusing to perpetuate imperialism, Coltfelter became an activist, educator, and an anti-fascist librarian serving rural and marginalized communities in pursuit of mindful liberation.

    Additional resources:

    Credits:

    • Producer: Rosette Sewali
    • Studio Production: Cameron Granadino
    • Audio Post-Production: Stephen Frank
    Transcript

    The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.

    Marc Steiner:

    Welcome to the Marc Steiner Show here on The Real News. I’m Marc Steiner. It’s great to have you all with us as of this taping, the Gaza Sumud Flotilla has been at sea for 47 days, over 50 ships with people from 45 countries, bringing food, necessities and solidarity to the people of Gaza. And it’s called Sumud because Sumud means steadfastness and perseverance in Arabic. It’s a central theme and concept in the Palestinian identity. And as we begin this interview, Israelis are preparing to intercept and arrest all of the Flotilla participants evenly in Spain are sending military ship to provide assistance and possible rescues if needed. So the Flotilla activists are literally putting their lives on the line to end the slaughter in Gaza, to bring needed food and medicine to break the blockade. And we’re joined today by two of them. Philip Tottenham is a Marine Corps veteran member of Veterans of Peace, a human rights activist. He was leader of the 40 day veterans and allies fast for Gaza and reports regularly from the 46 foot sailboat Oela. Jessica Coltfelter also served in the Marines. She was part of the security detail for the Presidential Helicopter Squadron Marine One, and worked as a defense contractor for Triple Canopy. She refused to participate to perpetuate imperialism, became an activist, an educator, and serves as an anti-fascist librarian in rural and marginalized communities in the pursuit of mindful liberation. So both join us. They’re both serving on the 46 foot sailboat Oela whose crew are mostly veterans.

    Once again, Jessica and Philip, thank you for joining us today. It’s really an honor and a pleasure to have you both with us putting our lives on the line for the God and people and to end the madness and the slaughter. And I really want to know from the both of you as us veterans, as peace activists, why you put your life line here to join this flotilla to go to Gaza.

    Philip Tottenham:

    Great question. A lot of unpacking for me personally, after having been brainwashed in the Marines and bootcamp, as we’re 18 year olds, our prefrontal cortexes aren’t fully developed and they break us down for two months and then build us back up in their image, singing chants, basically ready to fight, ready to kill, ready to die, but never will. And so for me, it took about 10 years after I got out, I got out in 2002, a little bit sooner. 2010 is when I started unpacking and everything and following the money and realizing that our country, that we are in the belly of the beast, that we are, the empire that we are together with Israel and some other countries, the axis of evil. And me especially being a descendant of original Texas settler, the old 300 that came along with Stephen F. Austin and slaughtered and murdered thousands of indigenous people. It was personal for me and I couldn’t stand to watch another genocide unfold of indigenous peoples on our watch. And so that’s why I’m here. And just, I’ve been to the West Bank and seen and felt the beauty of the Palestinian people, their genuine hospitality and how much more alike we are with them than anybody in our government and the billionaire class.

    Marc Steiner:

    And Jessica, what about you?

    Jessica Coltfelter:

    Quite frankly, my heart was not going to let me joy, peace. I think if you’ve been paying attention even a little bit at all for not just the last two years, but for several, you will not have peace in your heart. And I learned very quickly what imperialism looked like in the Marine Corps. And I learned very quickly what it meant to be a woman on the side of imperialism with the violence that is done to women’s bodies. And I could no longer stand perpetuated. I went to Kuwait in 2014 as a Defend contractor. And even though we were not a military unit, I worked with a lot of ex-military members and I saw the same level of imperialism there, the same violence against women’s bodies. And it was in 2014 that Michael Brown was shot and killed in the streets of Ferguson, Missouri. And my buddies at the time that were all former military there in Kuwait were making light of it, making jokes, making some horrific memes. And that was after what I had seen in the Marine Corps. And I knew right then and there, I can never do this again. I will never do this again.

    Marc Steiner:

    As I get to this next thought, I want to tell you both that I spoke to a number of my Jarhead friends last night and they all sent their best in solidarity with what you two are doing. Thank you. A bunch of ’em are Jewish Marine Corps Vietnam vets, and they’re sending their best

    Philip Tottenham:

    Oh wow.

    Marc Steiner:

    To both of you.

    Philip Tottenham:

    Thank you. Please. Thank

    Marc Steiner:

    You. So coming back, I really want to know what you all mean when you talk about refusing to perpetuate imperialism and why you take that stance, what that means to you all both as veterans.

    Jessica Coltfelter:

    Sure. Yeah. Imperialism is an annexation of resources that are not yours and a killing of culture. And when I speak specifically about women’s bodies, our agency was taken away in the military, sexual assault, sexual violence. It’s so ENT that there’s its own term military sexual

    Marc Steiner:

    Trauma.

    Jessica Coltfelter:

    And I don’t know a single female marine that I served with, but that I was friends with that did not have that happen to them. So when I specifically talk about that and the female body, that’s what I mean. And in Kuwait, again, I was working for a defense contracting agency. It was the same thing that these men were perpetuating against women who were there from the Philippines and Ethiopia to work and left with trauma and with scars. So for me, that’s what I mean.

    Marc Steiner:

    That could be a whole conversation on itself. I mean, absolutely. Yeah, that’s horrendous. And what were you about to say? I’m sorry.

    Philip Tottenham:

    For me, it was unpacking major general Smedley Butler. In bootcamp, they taught us about all his medals and that he’s the most decorated marine of all times. But then you go to find out his political stances and his book that he wrote that wore his racket and saying that he was a front man for capitalism for oil companies. And also growing up as I did, my great-grandfather was good friends with LBJ before my great-grandfather owned Lone Star Brewery. He sold preens and they drove around from ranch to ranch and LBJ was his gate boy and he would pay LBJ in P liens. But it’s that proximity to power that I’ve seen. The good old boy club that I grew up in with my family and my older sister is good friends with Ashley Kavanaugh, who as you know is Supreme Court Justice. Brett Kavanaugh’s wife. My nephew’s godmother is Ashley. My brother-in-law is the head of government relations for ExxonMobil.

    Marc Steiner:

    Damn.

    Philip Tottenham:

    Yeah. And so it was George Bush that George w that introduced Ashley to Brett. And so the country life, just watching and seeing the good old boy club, the connections that are spread throughout the country to Washington DC that are among the wealthy and the privileged, it is a good old boys club and nobody else is invited.

    Marc Steiner:

    Sounds like your butt’s going to get disowned

    Philip Tottenham:

    Already bad,

    Marc Steiner:

    But lemme talk about what you think you both think this flotilla is going to accomplish and why you decided to do this. I mean, A, you’re putting your lives on the line that you haven’t done that before as Marines, but to put your life on the line, we don’t know what’s going to happen. We’re not sure how the Israeli Navys Israel is going to intervene and what they might do. So talk about what drove you to do this act, this particular act. Jessica, why don’t you start? I

    Jessica Coltfelter:

    Had seen the previous Flotillas that launched not just this summer, but in past years including the 2010 Flotilla where participants were murdered.

    Marc Steiner:

    Right.

    Jessica Coltfelter:

    And when I saw the call to action for veterans over the summer, my heart already knew that I was going before my name was even on the manifest. And I just followed my heart with that. I let it lead me like a compass. And I ended up here. And I’m from a rural area in Illinois where Palestine is not on the people’s lips. Palestine is not a topic of conversation. And I thought if I could come here, maybe I could bridge the gap of understanding and education the folks back home who are good people, but who are misinformed by design and by policy. And so that was a huge motivation for me to come here. I’m a mother as well, and I think it’s important that my son sees that I would go and this that other kids, my students from third and fourth grade that I taught see that their teacher, Ms. Jess would come out here, that those weren’t just words that I said that I taught, that I meant them.

    Marc Steiner:

    Wow. You teach second and third graders?

    Jessica Coltfelter:

    Yes, sir.

    Marc Steiner:

    Whoa. Okay. Philip, what were you about to say? I’m sorry.

    Philip Tottenham:

    Yeah, for me, it’s when I went to Palestine for the first time in 2023. It was during Ramadan actually when all the three Abrahamic face Holy Weeks overlapped. I was there for five weeks and went there on my own. And just the suffering, I went there to see with my own eyes what I had been researching for nine to 10 years, starting with in 2014 with the massacres in Gaza. But what I saw for the first time in my life were two dead 15-year-old boys that were shot dead by the IOF for throwing rocks against them when they had full riot gear on. And to see that, to see the throwing the apparentness of the occupation and apartheid, that immediately reminded me of the Texas Mexico border, how the border had crossed the indigenous people, just the amount of suffering because of white settler colonialism and the US War machine and empire inspired me and just out of sheer desperation to make a wave, I took a sledgehammer to the apartheid wall in Bethlehem being told by all my Palestinian friends that I’d be shot and I wasn’t. So after about two minutes of swinging the sledgehammer, I was just exhausted from doing it and dropped it and walked away. And so coming back from that and just going to protest and protest after protest after protest, and not seeing anything change or getting anywhere, I knew I had to put my life on the line again because in my heart that I was called to Palestine for the first time in 2023 and my heart is called again and I can’t not answer my heart’s call.

    Marc Steiner:

    So I want to come back to the Illa here, and for our listeners that don’t really have a sense of why you’re there and what’s going on, let’s just start with this. What’s the underlying reason? What’s the pull and passion of this flotilla? What it wants to accomplish, and how many ships do you have? How many people are involved?

    Philip Tottenham:

    There’s three things. We want to bring in aid, immediate aid, which we all have on board, all of our ships and as many places that we can store it as possible. So to break the siege and to establish a humanitarian corridor for governments, right? Because we’re civilian led and we don’t have nearly the resources that governments do, that our governments have failed us to establish that humanitarian corridor for ships to come in and be able to sustain and provide that much needed aid to Gaza.

    Jessica Coltfelter:

    I also want to speak to the magic of the participants that are here. There are over 45 tributes that are represented here with hundreds of participants. And we’ve all taken and believe in nonviolence. We’ve taken an oath of nonviolence, but we’re mothers and fathers, there’s grandparents here, retirees, teachers. I’ve met electricians, firefighters, natural builders, professors, reporters. I mean, every service industry that you can think of is represented here and it’s across the globe who all see the light of God in our siblings in Palestine and who refuse to allow this apathy and appeasement from our governments to continue. And our training in Barcelona, it was really magical to meet all of these delegates who believe in the same thing as we do and who are willing to do the same thing and break this illegal siege on Gaza. And we set sail

    Marc Steiner:

    When people in movements do certain things. They put their lives in the line. When I was really young and a civil rights worker in Mississippi, we could have been killed at any moment. But so you’re putting yourselves out there in a situation that could take your own life, and that’s a huge step to take that you all took. And I want to talk just about a little bit from the two of you about what pushed you into this. I mean, you’re not directly involved in Israel Palestine, you both served our country as Marines, but you’re not involved in that struggle. You’re neither Palestinian nor Jewish. So what drove you to do what you’re doing?

    Philip Tottenham:

    Yeah, we’re human, right? It’s

    Marc Steiner:

    Humanity.

    Philip Tottenham:

    We don’t let the pride that we were instilled with in bootcamp and in the Marines affect us anymore. We shed that pride and that ego and that pride causes apathy, right? Love is not proud. We serve humanity. We serve love unconditionally, we believe, and I think I speak for everybody. I mean I can’t, but no human life is more valuable or less valuable than the other. And we’re sitting here watching human lives and children and innocent men and beautiful men and women and elderly getting slaughtered and starved to death. If we believe that nobody else’s life is more important than why not put our lives on the line?

    Jessica Coltfelter:

    Absolutely.

    Marc Steiner:

    What do you want to add to that, Jessica?

    Jessica Coltfelter:

    Every soul alive right now, we exist in the same crux and time. And that’s got to mean something. It means something to me. There is no distinction of separation that exists between us. And for those of you or listeners who think that we are different, I just want to ask who got to you? Why do you think that it’s important that we’re all here at the same time that we’re siblings in humanity and this disease of apathy is so pervasive, especially in my culture, that it’s akin to toughness and that is the opposite of evolution. I don’t know what kind of perverse evolution prevents you from hearing screams and scenes of suffering. I won’t be a part of it. My heart won’t allow me. Bill is essentially saying the same thing. It was a must. It was compulsory. To be quite honest. I didn’t think twice about it. And I think that you will find that same thing with a lot of the participants here. Over 26,000 people applied to be in this flotilla,

    Marc Steiner:

    26,000

    Jessica Coltfelter:

    People. Yes, and a couple hundred were selected. And I know that there were many, many more around the globe who wanted to come, but because of the demands of capitalism and the demands of our lives, were unable to do that. And so I’m honored and privileged to be among those ranks. And I want my friends and family in Palestine to see not just me, but all of these people, all of these strangers who are coming together out of love, out of loving kindness and loving awareness, willing to do this.

    Marc Steiner:

    26,000. Let me just stop there for just a second. So that’s a lot of people. So strategically, what do you two think this means if there are 26,000 people willing to put their lives on the line in a flotilla to stop the slaughter and Gaza, does this mean A, that what you two and the others are doing now will continue and happen again with all these other people wanting to go? And how does this fit into the strategy to stop the slaughter and killing in Gaza and destruction of Palestinian people? What do you both think? Granted,

    Jessica Coltfelter:

    One of the points of this mission was establish a humanitarian aid corridor. So maybe some of those 26,000 couldn’t be selected for this one, but the next one will come. Hopefully there won’t be another need for a next one. But if there are, we’ve got the ranks ready.

    Philip Tottenham:

    Yeah, I think it shows that we’re seeing through the world is seeing through the lives of the empire of the American Israeli axis of Evil empire. And I just want to say that as Marines we’ve and served, and in the military, we serve the empire. So why not serve humanity? And I just want to add that before I found Veterans for Peace and about faith and Code Pink, I was kind of doing this on my own. And it’s really through plugging into these organizations and getting organized. The way that the war machine is organized and has been organized is how we combat this. And so I really, we encourage people to sign up for and plug into whatever organizations that they align with. But for military veterans, for Peace, and you don’t have to be a member or a veteran, you can be an associate member, but about Face is also veterans and then Code Pink obviously. And other organizations like Fsna that help me get plugged in with bringing my idea of the veterans and Allies 40 day fast for Gaza that we did a couple months ago. And just how that grew. I wouldn’t have been able be here right now without plugging into those organizations and veterans piece specifically for me.

    Marc Steiner:

    So just before I walked in the studio, I was just checking the latest news about what’s happening and it appears as if Israel’s about to take on the Flotilla. So talk to all people listening today about what that means for two of you and for the rest on the Flotilla and how you respond to that. If that Israeli navy in fact attacks and takes over the Flotilla, what will your response be? Jessica?

    Jessica Coltfelter:

    We have trained for a lot of contingencies. There’s a lot of things that can happen. And I think one aspect that veterans bring to this is that we can plan and we can adapt, improvise. So we’ve been pretty fluid with our contingency plans. We do drills every day. We get in meetings every day and discuss what the plan of attack, what our exercise plan looks like.

    Marc Steiner:

    I understand, right? Yep. And what’s the situation right now that you’re in, just in terms of the actual threat? And you must have to be on a constant alert.

    Jessica Coltfelter:

    Absolutely. We post a pretty vigilant two man fire watch every night. Sorry, what we’re posting fire watch. We have our daily briefs. The last that I heard was that Israel had called for civilians to get out in their own civilian boats and form a blockade and meet us. So we’ll see what that looks like if that comes to fruition.

    Marc Steiner:

    So I want to ask you two very specific things here. Things that you both, that have been said out of the flotilla and that you’ve said, and one is, you had mentioned earlier in our conversation that you’re looking at the Israelis at this moment who were in the Army about to attack the Flotilla as cowards. What do you mean by that?

    Philip Tottenham:

    Yeah, right. They have all the weapons in the world. They’re the most advanced military because of the United States and the access of evil. And they’re pointing and fighting against unarmed, innocent civilians and us as a humanitarian organization and flotilla, right, that they’re threatening us. So how hard is it to not have fear to go against someone that’s unarmed the Palestinians, the courage that they have inspire us. They’re the reasons that we’re doing this to face what they faced not only for the last two years of the genocide, but for 77 years that this has been going on under the guise of American lies and Israeli lies, white settler colonial lies.

    Marc Steiner:

    Did you want to add to that, Jessica? We only had,

    Jessica Coltfelter:

    Sure. It’s not an accident when children are showing up with bullets in their head. It’s not an accident when a hospital gets bombed and the rescue workers that come to the hospital to rescue those under the rubble also get bombed. These aren’t accidents. We see a lot of violent action. And then apologies later, just like with the Qatari delegations targeted and attacked. You can’t tell me that that wasn’t without the approval of United States, but just within the last 24 or 48 hours, the entities, Lord Ruler has apologized for it, but he didn’t apologize for the violence, then he apologized that he misses Target. That’s not an accident.

    Marc Steiner:

    And when you both talk about follow the money, what does that mean to you? What does that follow the money?

    Philip Tottenham:

    Follow the money really is simple as far as following the donors of our congressional that are supposed to be our representatives, but they serve money. They’re narcissists that serve their own. And so you look across both aisles and you see the same donors time and time again. And like I said, I’ve had this inside view from my brother-in-law being the head of government relations with ExxonMobil. They write the bills and have ’em pass ’em. And the majority of the time of what our representatives are doing are raising money for themselves and for the DNC and RNC machines that are the two wings of the same bird.

    Marc Steiner:

    So with this approaching attack on the Flotilla A, I’m curious what you think your next steps are, and when they come to block you from going into Gaza, what are your next moves when you get back? Should do this again? So what do you think your next moves are in all of this? Because they’re clearly about to stop you all from getting the Gaza.

    Philip Tottenham:

    I mean, we were trained before this in nonviolence, and so that’s what we are going to do when and if they decide to interdict us, which we anticipate that they likely will, that’s what we’re going to do. We’re not going to resist. We’re going to be do our training, get up on board, let them illegally kidnap us as a war crime, and we anticipate that they’ll be waiting for us there. I think tonight at 4:00 AM we reach the red zone and we think that they’re waiting for us closer to shore. And we’ve heard that there’ll be a floating prison basically for us this time, since this is the biggest flotilla in history. And so in the past where they’ve escorted a ship in to the immigration jails, they may do that, but I think that’s what we’ve heard is a floating prison to get us there. And then there’s the Looming terrorism charges. And so there’s a lot of conversations that I’ve had with my sons preparing them one way or the other, uncomfortable tearful conversations, heartfelt conversations, just in case they do decide to get violent and attack us and go and take their masks completely off. Have had to have those conversations. But yeah, so those are the options that we’re preparing for. Oh, sorry, the boat really rocking right now.

    Marc Steiner:

    That’s okay. I’m going to let you all go in just, I know you have things to do. But Jessica, I mean, because one of the things that after reading about this and listening to the two of you, I think people have to understand the courage, what it takes to be a nonviolent military warrior, which is what you are.

    Jessica Coltfelter:

    Yes, sir. It takes a paradigm shift. It takes perspective shift, but it’s a higher vibration, quite frequency. It’s a higher resonance. It’s easy to tap into those lower level emotions of wanting to fight back. But I’m compelled by the consciousness of Christ. And when I say consciousness of Christ, I mean the person that he was, the decisions that he made. And I can’t say that if I’m not willing to do it myself. And I just want to add that the, we’re called the Global Saud Flo Tillis. Saud means perseverance, it means steadfastness. And it was named after our siblings in Palestine. And it’s something that I take to heart and that I’ve adopted.

    Marc Steiner:

    We’re going to stay close as we can to you all and keep this story alive and keep following up and not letting it go. And you’re putting your lives on the line to stop the slaughtering Gaza at this moment. So I want to thank you both so much for the work you’re doing. Thank you for being out there. So please stay safe and we will stay in touch. But thank you both so much for your bravery and for your putting your lives on line and fighting for the Palestinian people. Thank you.

    Philip Tottenham:

    Thank you. Thank you for what you do.

    Marc Steiner:

    Once again, thank you to Jessica Coltfelter and Philip Tottenham for joining us today and for putting our lives on the line for the people in Gaza. And thanks to Cameron Granadino for running the program today. Our audio editor, Stephen Frank, and producer Rosette Sewali, we’re making it all work behind the scenes and everyone here at the World News, we’re making this show possible. We’ll keep following the Flotilla, bringing you updates, and you can follow them at www.freedomflotilla.org. So please let me know what you thought or what you heard today, what you’d like us to cover. Just write to me at mss@therealnews.com and I’ll get right back to you. So for the crew here at The Real News, I’m Marc Steiner. Stay involved. Keep listening, and take care.

    This post was originally published on The Real News Network.

  • Israeli Official: Palestinians Who Don’t Evacuate Gaza City Deemed “Terrorists”

    The Israeli army just announced that it won’t allow Palestinians in central and southern Gaza to travel north to Gaza City. Movement will only be allowed to leave the city for the south, the Israeli army said in a statement. Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz also said that this was the Palestinians’ “last warning” to leave Gaza City, adding that anyone who remains will be considered “terrorists…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Computer Science Lecturer at Berkeley Is on Day 36 of His Hunger Strike for Gaza

    In the fall of 2023, Peyrin Kao was teaching one of his giant computer sciences (CS) courses — classes with a capacity cap of 800 people that students often compete to enroll in, hoping to springboard six-figure careers in the tech industry. Kao had completed his formal lectures for the semester when he projected an announcement onto the classroom’s screen. “At this point, C16B lecture is over…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • BREAKING: Israeli attack on flotilla underway ‘within the hour’

    The volunteer crews of the Global Sumud Flotilla of humanitarian boats has announced the likely imminent illegal attack by Israel’s naval commando unit on the flotilla ‘within the hour’. GSF radars currently show a concentration of roughly 12 unidentified vessels, 5-15 miles from the flotilla.

    Israeli attack on flotilla underway

    Contact has been disconnected with some GSF vessels, with some experiencing signal jamming.

    A live feed is currently showing flotilla radio operators warning approaching interceptors that they are breaking international law.

    By Skwawkbox

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Judge’s Ruling Will Help Mahmoud Khalil Against Ongoing Attempt to Deport Him

    A Reagan-appointed judge has issued a scathing ruling rebuking the Trump administration’s targeting of pro-Palestine students. Judge William G. Young called the case AAUP v. Rubio “perhaps the most important ever to fall within the jurisdiction of this district court” and ruled that contrary to the State Department’s claims, “non-citizens lawfully present here in [the] United States actually have…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Mass murderer Tony Blair set to administer post-genocide Gaza

    “War criminals are proposing a war criminal as head of…. Gaza.” That was the verdict of former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis responding to the mooted role of mass murderer Tony Blair in leading a transitional authority in the devastated territory.

    The former British prime minister (PM) has been selected by US president Donald Trump as part of a ‘Board of Peace’, which will be chaired by the latter. The group will be responsible for governing Gaza, should Hamas accept a 20 point plan put forward by the US genocidaire-in-chief. The proposals envisage a complete cessation of the genocide, referred to as a “war” in the text, with a phased withdrawal of Israeli forces. However, in textbook style, Netanyahu immediately addressed his deranged society to emphasise the permanence of Israeli Genocide Forces (IGF) within Gaza. Hebrew apparently exists in a frequency outside the hearing range of Western journalists, and therefore like all such comments, these remarks have largely gone unreported in the mainstream press.

    Fawning Streeting talks up potential Blair role

    One person Britain’s highly admired journalists have been listening to is health secretary Wes Streeting, who salivated at the prospect of Blair, a man despised across West Asia, taking on a governance role in Palestine. Streeting cited the former PM’s role in the Northern Ireland peace process as grounds for his suitability, telling LBC:

    I also think about Tony Blair’s other legacy, great legacy, which is Northern Ireland, and there he showed that he could bring together sworn enemies to broker a lasting peace.

    So if Tony Blair can put those skills to use, if he’s got the confidence of both the Israelis, the Palestinians, and the regional players, as seems to be the case, then great. If he can make that contribution, and that can be another legacy, a positive legacy under his belt, then so much the better.

    It’s correct that Blair did play a positive role in forging the Good Friday Agreement, as one of successive British leaders who had finally recognised the dead-end centuries of colonial violence represented. The peace deal has proven far from perfect, however, with 55% of the Six Counties population saying it needs to be modified. The deal has effectively institutionalised the sectarian divide, with the enforced representation of both ‘communities’ – nationalist and unionist – in government posts often creating fractious stand-offs. Non-aligned parties end up sidelined, and the bitter hostility between the primary opposing factions has led to multiple collapses of the Stormont executive.

    Streeting acknowledged the incongruity of Blair taking up such a role in West Asia, saying “it would raise some eyebrows.” He also recognised that the decision to invade Iraq was a “catastrophic error” that had “devastating consequences.” Up to 1 million Iraqis are estimated to have been murdered by Blair and his co-conspirators, which a reasonable person might say leaves open to question his respect for the wellbeing of Arab people.

    Blair’s disastrous plan revealed in full

    The plan concocted by Blair for running Gaza ought to reinforce that notion. Revealed in full for the first time by Haaretz on Sunday September 28, the document imagines a Gaza International Transitional Authority (GITA) with a board populated mainly by assorted super-rich ghouls, with perhaps the most nauseating being the proposed role of Aryeh Lightstone. The head of the Abraham Accords Peace Institute was a key figure in the creation of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a vehicle for sadism that stood out even amidst the Zionist’s entity’s other cruelties. Troops at its death traps disguised as aid sites have gunned down 1000s of starving Palestinians, as they sought food.

    Blair’s plan sees various additional layers of government, with Haaretz describing an:

    …Executive Secretariat of GITA, which will be the “central administrative hub and implementing organ.” Below that will be five commissioners – one each for humanitarian affairs, reconstruction, legislation and legal, security oversight and coordination with the PA.

    At the bottom of the heap would be a Palestinian Executive Authority, responsible for actual policy implementation and service delivery within Gaza., though even this limited involvement for Palestinians would feature a board-appointed CEO.

    The plan does at least seem to diminish the IGF’s role in the territory, with security control mainly falling within the remit of an “international stabilisation force.” Nonetheless, the document as a whole appears to be another colonial imposition that blocks Palestinian self-determination.

    Elements of the plan appear to have been incorporated into Trump’s 20 point vision, with item nine referencing Blair’s involvement in:

    …temporary transitional governance of a technocratic, apolitical Palestinian committee, responsible for delivering the day-to-day running of public services and municipalities for the people in Gaza

    Point 15 refers to the “international stabilisation force” from the Blair GITA proposal.

    Varoufakis denounces sidelining of UN, ICJ and Palestinians

    Varoufakis followed his broadside against the criminal Blair by denouncing the Trump proposals. He cited near absence of UN involvement (they will be confined to aid distribution) and the failure to release all 15,000 Palestinian prisoners held by the Zionist pseudo-state among his objections. Most crucially perhaps, he pointed out how the agreement:

    – nullifies the International Court of Justice (which in June 2024 ordered Israel to withdraw immediately and completely from East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Gaza), and
    – abolishes both International Law and the United Nations’ obligation to enforce it

    These more substantive objections trump the musings of the moronic Streeting on Tony Blair, whose role – among 1000s of others – in a flawed peace deal 27 years ago can’t disguise his many crimes since.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Robert Freeman

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Lawyers Without Borders supports flotilla’s accusations over Italy and Spain’s betrayal

    International law advocacy group Lawyers Without Borders (LWB) has publicly supported the accusation by the humanitarian Global Sumud Flotilla (GSF) fleet of volunteer-crewed aid boats that Spain and Italy – which provided ships to escort the flotilla but are not offering it military defence – have refused to give it the protection it needs to reach Gaza with its cargo of baby food, medicines and other essentials during Israel’s criminal starvation blockade.

    Spain backs down on its supposed commitment to the flotilla

    In a statement, LWB said:

    We support the Flotilla’s complaint, which issued a statement overnight stating that it believes Madrid has refused to provide it with “the protection necessary to reach” the shores of Gaza with humanitarian aid. “Through action and omission, the Spanish government becomes complicit in what may happen.”

    The same applies to the hypocritical Italian government, which, by violating international law, shifts responsibility for the criminal actions that may be carried out by the terrorist government of Israel onto the victims. This is the only true terrorist and fascist organization in the Middle East, which claims to dictate even Palestinian territorial waters by preventing anyone from crossing the exclusion zone designated by Israel in international waters 120 nautical miles (193 km) from Gaza.

    The Spanish government has indicated it will do no more than rescue survivors of any attack, while the Italians tried to pressure the flotilla into surrendering its cargo and abandoning its voyage; Greece said it would protect the flotilla, but only while it was in Greek waters.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Skwawkbox

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Israel has just cut off North Gaza from the South by shutting the Al-Rashid Coastal Road

    Israeli occupation forces have committed a new crime against civilians in the Gaza Strip by closing Al-Rashid Coastal Road, one of the last vital arteries connecting the north of the Strip with the south, exacerbating the suffering of the besieged population and cutting off the last safe passage available to them.

    Al-Rashid Coastal Road, which runs along the western coast of Gaza, is the only remaining road after the destruction and restriction of most other crossings and main roads. It was used by citizens fleeing the bombing in search of safer areas.

    With the closure of this road, hundreds of thousands of residents in northern Gaza are now under a double siege: continuous bombing from the air and land, and forced starvation and isolation from land and sea, at a time when the humanitarian situation is deteriorating day by day. Observers describe this move as part of a systematic policy to divide the Strip into isolated areas, impose a new demographic reality, and deepen the humanitarian catastrophe for more than two million Palestinians.

    Stories from the field: resilience and pain

    In the heart of Gaza City, amid the rubble of neighbourhoods under constant bombardment, resident Abdelkader Khalil refuses to leave his home despite the imminent danger. ‘We will not go south, we will stay here no matter how intense the bombing gets. This is our homeland, and we will not leave it,’ he says.

    Abdul Qader moves from neighbourhood to neighbourhood within the city in search of temporary shelter, but he insists on not leaving the northern Gaza Strip. He sees his decision to stay as an expression of resilience and a rejection of attempts at forced displacement, emphasising that the closure of Al-Rashid Street has exacerbated people’s suffering and restricted their movement, even to secure food or reach their relatives. “We are trapped within the siege, and every step is fraught with death… But we will not give up,” he says with determination.

    Abdul Rahman Alian, on the other hand, has had a different experience. He was forced to flee with his family to the Al-Zawida area in the centre of the Strip, while his family remained in the north under bombardment. Abdul Rahman recounts the pain of separation from his loved ones: ‘I am here physically, but my heart is in the north. The closure of Al-Rashid Street cut the last thread between me and my family. I cannot reach them or even check on them.’

    Despite his displacement, he does not see the central area as truly safe, but rather as ‘a transition from one danger to another,’ as he puts it. ‘We live in crowded tents and lack the most basic necessities of life, but my greatest suffering is thinking about my brothers who are trapped there. I don’t know if they will survive,’ he said.

    Closing the Al-Rashid Coastal Road: a complete crime by Israel

    In the same context, the Government Media Office in Gaza accused the Israeli occupation of committing a ‘new crime’ by closing Al-Rashid Coastal Road, considering it part of the policy of siege and genocide against the civilian population in the Strip.

    The statement issued by the office emphasised that this measure aims to deprive civilians of their freedom of movement and disrupt their ability to seek safe areas or secure their basic needs, pointing out that the occupation’s claims of allowing ‘free’ passage to the south are merely pretexts to mislead public opinion and conceal its crimes.

    The media office noted that the occupation, along with the US administration, bears full legal and humanitarian responsibility for the catastrophic consequences of closing the road, calling on the international community and the United Nations to take immediate action to protect civilians and guarantee their right to safe movement.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Alaa Shamali

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Israel spending millions to ‘train ChatGPT’ to be more pro-Israel

    Israel has awarded a $6 million contract to a US company named Clock Tower X (CTX) to create and spread content on digital platforms, manipulate algorithms – and also to ‘train’ (manipulate) ChatGPT and other ‘artificial intelligence frameworks’ to make them more favourable toward the Zionist entity and its actions.

    Israel training ChatGPT to be pro-Israel

    CTX is the company of Trump’s former campaign manager Brad Parscale. According to a Responsible Statecraft report:

    At least 80 percent of content Clock Tower produces will be “tailored to Gen Z audiences across platforms, including TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, podcasts, and other relevant digital and broadcast outlets” with a minimum goal of 50 million impressions per month.

    Clock Tower will even deploy “websites and content to deliver GPT framing results on GPT conversations.” In other words, Clock Tower will create new websites to influence how AI GPT models such as ChatGPT, which are trained on vast amounts of data from every corner of the internet, frame topics and respond to them — all on behalf of Israel.

    The news comes hot on the heels of the Israel lobby’s multi-billion-dollar purchase of TikTok, which the Zionist propagandists say they will ‘train’ to promote Israel. The platform has been on Israel’s and the US’s hit-list since the beginning of Israel’s genocide because the popular Chinese-owned social was allowing US and other western youth to see Israel’s genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza within moments of Israel perpetrating them.

    During his visit to the US last week, Netanyahu admitted that Israel weaponises social media for its propaganda and identified TikTok as “the most important purchase going on right now”:

    By Skwawkbox

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Israel is recruiting Palestinian families to form armed gangs under threat of airstrikes if they refuse

    Israel intelligence has repeatedly been trying to recruit Palestinians in Gaza to form armed gangs. There have been reports of the Israeli Security Agency, or Shin Bet, approaching community elders from prominent Palestinian families in Gaza, pressuring them to form local armed groups, and to manage aid distribution, police neighbourhoods, fight Hamas, and pass on information to the occupation.

    Israel recruiting armed gangs in Gaza to turn Palestinians against each other

    Yesterday, in the southern neighbourhood of Gaza City called Tel Al-Hawa, houses belonging to the Abu Hasira family were bombed after they refused recruitment attempts by the Israeli occupation to become part of the operations against their fellow Palestinians.

    A Palestinian, called Motassem Baker, has also spoken of the pressure his family have been facing from the Israeli occupation forces (IOF), who guaranteed their security in their homes if members of his family joined the armed gangs which are backed by the occupation.

    Baker said:

    Yesterday, the elder of our family left after deciding, along with the rest of the family, to abandon their homes in Western Gaza. This came following a phone call in which he was asked to stay, with a promise of safety, on the condition that the family’s sons act as a militia like ‘Abu Shabab’ and commit to the army’s policies.

    Palestinians who reject the occupation’s advances pay a heavy price

    But his family chose to reject the occupation’s offer. They left their homes, preferring to sleep on the streets rather than betray the Palestinian community. Just hours after the refusal, Israeli occupation forces bombed the family block, committing a massacre against Baker’s cousins.

    The aim is to divide Gaza into clan-controlled regions, blocking the emergence of a unified Palestinian leadership, or the foundation of a future Palestinian state. When these Palestinians refuse to collaborate, the Israeli occupation retaliates with brutal airstrikes: In the al-Sabra area of Gaza City, 30 members of the Doghmush family were killed, with at least 20 more still under the rubble, near Al-Shati camp.

    Yasser Abu Shabab, a gang leader and convicted criminal thought to have links to Isis, is an Israeli occupation collaborator and head of the Popular Forces. This is an Israeli occupation-backed criminal gang, operating in the Rafah area and armed by Shin Bet . It has been responsible for systematic looting of humanitarian aid bound for Gaza’s starving population, and also forced displacement and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in Gaza.

    Occupation weakening the social cohesion of Palestinian community in Gaza

    The Israeli occupation has openly confirmed that local clans and gangs opposing Hamas have been “activated” and armed on the recommendation of security chiefs, justifying this as a means to “save the lives of Israeli soldiers”. This policy has profound social and humanitarian consequences, as it not only intensifies lawlessness in Gaza, but also undermines traditional sources of authority and unity.

    Traditionally, local families and community leaders have been stabilising forces that maintained order and resolved disputes. But now weapons and external backing are involved, these groups become competing power centres, fueling internal rivalries, spreading violence, and weakening unity in Palestinian society.

    Since late 2024, the occupation has not only approached influential Palestinian families, offering support and arms in exchange for their opposition to Hamas and cooperation in new political arrangements, but has also deliberately assassinated Hamas government personnel as part of a concerted campaign to create a social and political vacuum in Gaza. This vacuum is then filled by armed groups and looters.

    Hamas has responded by establishing special units tasked with combatting the rise of these gangs, but such forces have repeatedly come under direct attack by Israeli drones and military units, underlining the Israeli occupation’s active protection and encouragement of criminal chaos.

    Shin Bet has used blackmail and coercion to recruit individuals, forcing them to act as informants or agents within Gaza. These agents engage in looting and trespassing, often with explicit orders to target resistance members and contribute to general lawlessness, and the proliferation of weapons among these groups has only made the violence and mistrust worse.

    Israel is breaking Gaza’s social fabric by recruiting armed gangs

    Gaza is being pushed into intentional disorder, as once tightly-knit families grounded in loyalty and solidarity are being undermined by outside forces and internal conflicts. Those who refuse recruitment, such as the Baker family, face the certainty of airstrikes, while those collaborators accepting the occupation’s offers of ‘safety’, lose all credibility among their people.

    Israel’s policy of arming clans, gangs, and criminal networks in Gaza erodes the foundations for any stable political future. By dismantling traditional leadership structures and fueling rivalries between clans, the Israeli occupation is creating a fragmented landscape where no credible authority can emerge. This fragmentation undermines prospects for a unified Palestinian state and prolongs instability, ensuring that any post-genocide arrangement will only be shaped by manipulation from outside forces.

    Feature image via Al Jazeera English/Youtube. 

    By Charlie Jaay

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • It wasn’t only Galloway Israel just lied about – it literally made up a Hamas group as well

    Israel has tried to escalate its propaganda attack on the humanitarian Global Sumud Flotilla (GSF) of volunteer-crewed boats heading with vital aid to Gaza, with a deranged smear claiming to “prove Hamas’s direct involvement in the funding and execution of the “Sumud” flotilla to Gaza”.

    Those who read on are then taken down a twisting path of almost-certainly faked ‘documents’ that then lead to a destination that would be hilarious were the Zionist regime not trying to use it to justify physically attacking the peaceful volunteers – and has indeed already started doing so:

    The regime that has lied about bombing hospitals, lied about murdering journalists, lied about the deaths of its own people that it killed in ‘immense’ numbers on 7 October 2023, lied about the UN, lied about rapes, lied about baked and beheaded babies – lied about everything, non-stop, for the last two years – asks us to believe that it “discovered” “Hamas documents” proving a link between the so-called “Palestinian Conference for Palestinians Abroad” and Hamas.

    Palestinian Conference for Palestinians Abroad literally doesn’t exist

    Palestinian Conference for Palestinians Abroad has no website, no Wikipedia entry and, judging by a complete absence of mentions on Google before the current propaganda campaign, seems to be an entity that only exists in Israel’s fevered ‘hasbara’ and only even that in the last few weeks, according to Google. The older links that come up supposedly quoting the ‘organisation’s name on the search engine don’t in fact mention it – and any mentions that do pop up are quotes in new comments about Israel’s claim.

    From that bizarre starting point, we’re then meant to believe that a ‘letter’ from assassinated Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh asking Palestinian Conference for Palestinians Abroad to unite with Hamas is evidence that it’s part of Hamas – and that another ‘document’ lists the non-existent group’s ‘operatives’, who conveniently include leading GSF figures Zaher Birawi and ‘Saif Abukashk’, apparently a reference to well-known Sumud March organiser Saif Abukeshek.

    When they joined the non-existent group isn’t made clear, but the allegation was immediately added to the flotilla’s Wikipedia page – by an Israeli user account set up some years ago that has made anti-Palestinian edits on a number of other pages that have been picked up and corrected by Wikipedia editors.

    From that, we’re then asked to believe the unreferenced assertion that Abu Keshek runs a company that owns many of the flotilla boats – and that “Thus![!] the company is “secretly owned by Hamas”.

    From hasbara to farce

    But now we descend from the usual baseless ‘hasbara’ (pro-Israel propaganda) into outright farce – because the Israel foreign ministry then provides images it claims prove the links to Hamas by showing the flotilla’s Birawi with Hamas leaders.

    But it’s not him in the photo with the Hamas figures.

    Not only is it not him, but it’s George Galloway, a politician well known to the British people and many internationally, not only for being a seven-times elected member of Parliament but as a participant in a notorious season of TV’s Big Brother.

    And the two don’t even look alike:

    Zaher Birawi, circled by Israel.
    George Galloway, circled by Israel.

    Israel’s propaganda is famously shoddy, but this is plumbing new depths. As a self-own it’s hilarious and highly revealing about its methods and arrogance – not just Galloway, but also when it comes to the non-existent Palestinian Conference for Palestinians Abroad.

    As a threat to peaceful people trying to stop babies and others from being starved to death by Israel, it’s grotesque, sinister, evil. It needs to be widely circulated as well as heavily mocked and condemned.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Skwawkbox

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Jewish fast for Gaza will begin on Westminster Bridge to mark holy day of Yom Kippur

    Jewish peace campaigners have been preparing a Fast for Gaza for the 2025 holy day of Yom Kippur. This will begin on Westminster Bridge tonight at 6pm and then move to gather outside parliament.

    A Yom Kippur act of solidarity

    As the Canary previously reported, Jewish Peaceniks UK wanted to express their “horror and outrage” over Israel’s genocide in Gaza with a public fast on Yom Kippur, which is an opportunity to “reflect on the past year” and “put things right”. The day of atonement is “the most sacred and solemn day in the Jewish calendar”.

    The older Jewish women of conscience from Jewish Peaceniks have planned the event together with Jewish Anti Zionist Action – a cross-generational group of Jewish people. And they’ve called on other Jewish people to join them. They have already assembled:

    a cross section of Jewish men and women, many of whom are descendants of Holocaust survivors deeply disturbed at the horrific irony of a genocide being perpetrated ‘in our name’ by a Jewish state.

    In a statement, they explained what will happen, saying:

    At dusk, a large gathering of Jews will line up on Westminster bridge to symbolically cast Israel’s sins of genocide into the Thames. They will then process to the location for the fast, in front of Parliament. The lighting of memorial candles at 6.30 pm will mark the beginning of Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish Calendar when we fast for 25 hours and consider our misdeeds over the past year. This will be followed by the cantorial chanting of the opening Hebrew prayers followed by a silent vigil.

    They added:

    Israel is currently committing the grotesque misdeed of starving an entire population. We are therefore dedicating our fast on this Yom Kippur to the starving population of Gaza.

    Through their action, they explained, they hope to:

    draw attention to the powerful and growing Jewish opposition to the actions of a Jewish state against the Palestinian people in Gaza and to demand immediate action: stop the enforced starvation of Gaza, stop the genocide.

    A growing movement of Jewish people saying ‘not in our name!’

    The fast will continue on 2 October and “some people will be staying overnight”. As Carolyn Gelenter, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor, said:

    We will be doing our own version of the Yom Kippur Day of Atonement service, including something called a Tashlich, where we name our sins over the year and cast breadcrumbs into a body of water (the Thames) from Westminster Bridge before moving outside parliament.

    She insisted that:

    Many Jews coming to this event have foregone going to synagogue in order to show their opposition to Israel’s genocide on this most auspicious of Jewish holy days.

    And she added:

    There is a growing movement of Jews who will attend synagogue dressed in black instead of white to show their opposition to what’s happening in Gaza.

    She also asserted:

    we, as anti-Zionist Jews, are extremely distressed about the genocide being committed in our name. We are also concerned about the rise in real anti-semitism as a result of the conflation of Judaism and Zionism and by publicising this event you can show that there is no one kind of Jew and that many of us do not support Zionism or Israel’s actions.

    During Israel’s genocide, and before, countless Jewish voices around the world have also insisted on a religious duty to fight for peace and oppose the apartheid state’s crimes against the Palestinian people. This includes some voices inside Israel itself.

    By Ed Sykes

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • The Defend Our Juries mass action this Saturday could surpass historic records for the number of Met arrests

    Defend Our Juries is announcing today, Wednesday 1 October, that the mass action defying the Palestine Action ban will take place in Trafalgar Square this Saturday 4 October. Over 1,500 people have signed a pledge making a firm commitment to join the action and therefore risk arrest.

    Defend Our Juries to turn out in defiance again over Palestine Action ban

    The action confirmation comes after prime minister Keir Starmer’s conference speech. In it, he ignored the Labour membership’s demand that his government recognise Israel is committing a genocide – as confirmed by the UN Commission of Inquiry report – and takes action to stop it by imposing sanctions on Israel and a full arms embargo. Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ speech was also disrupted by a protester asking why the government is still arming Israel, saying:

    Labour is complicit in the mass starvation of Palestinians.

    Although 1,500 have pledged to risk arrest for peacefully holding signs saying “I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action”, hundreds more are expected to join the action on the day without registering in advance. It will make this the biggest ever mass action defying the ban on Palestine Action.

    Police have arrested over 1,500 people for peaceful sign-holding under the Terrorism Act 2000 since the government brought the Palestine Action ban into effect on 5 July. This is more than six times the total number of counter-terror arrests in the whole of last year. The mass action in Trafalgar Square could see the total number of people arrested so far nearly double.

    Surpassing historic protest mass arrests

    This marks the first of the mass actions defying the Palestine Action ban that activists have held in Trafalgar Square. It’s where in 1961, the Met Police made a record 1,314 arrests during the Committee of 100’s anti-nuclear demonstration. The protest was the largest number of arrests ever made at a single event. This Saturday’s action could surpass that historic figure and set a new record of mass arrests by the Met.

    This is the first time protesters have carried out a week of ‘Lift The Ban’ mass actions defying the proscription. It began at Labour conference in Liverpool and will end in Trafalgar Square, the epicentre of the 1990 Poll Tax uprisings. Defend Our Juries describes the public backlash to the Palestine Action ban as “Labour’s Poll Tax moment”.

    Mass arrests overshadowed the Labour Party conference on Sunday. Protesters confronted Labour ministers with the consequences of the ban on Labour’s own doorstep. Despite deploying hundreds of officers, Merseyside Police took over nine hours to arrest 66 people out of about 100 people taking part in the action. It later de-arrested two people, bringing the total to 64. Arrestees included an 83 year-old woman, and another elderly woman who had to have oxygen delivered for her breathing apparatus while she was holding the sign.

    Companies complicit in genocide lobbied for the ban

    The Home Office has published new transparency data confirming a meeting took place between the Minister of Policing and Crime Prevention Diana Johnson MP with insurance giant Allianz UK on 3 June 2025, to discuss:

    protest activity and the destruction of property.

    Palestine Action had targeted Allianz dozens of times as it provides insurance for Elbit Systems UK, a UK subsidiary of the Israeli weapons giant Elbit Systems. This included a recent action targeting Allianz’ city headquarters office in March 2025. Weeks after the meeting between the Home Office Minister and Allianz, Palestine Action was proscribed as a terrorist organisation.

    In addition to the Home Office data release, a new letter obtained through an FOI request from the ADS Group’s chief executive Kevin Craven to the Scottish Government’s cabinet secretary confirms that he would be meeting with the Home Office minister, Diana Johnson, soon to discuss a “structured nationwide response” to Palestine Action protests targeting arms factory sites. ADS Group is the UK trade association which lobbies government on behalf of weapons manufacturers. Its members include Elbit Systems, Palestine Action’s primary target.

    A recent UN report named both Elbit Systems and Allianz as companies both profiting from and enabling genocide in a recent UN report.

    Time to make the proscription unenforceable, says Defend Our Juries

    A Defend Our Juries spokesperson said:

    With over 1,500 people already pledging to take part and hundreds more expected to register by the weekend, this is set to be the biggest mass action yet defying the ban on Palestine Action. While Keir Starmer ignores the demands of his own Party members to recognise Israel’s genocide and take action – including sanctions and a full arms embargo – thousands are stepping up where his Government refuses to act.

    This Saturday could soon see the number of arrests nearly double from the current total of 1,600, setting a new record for the largest mass arrest – an extraordinary misuse of counter-terror and policing resources.

    This comes as new evidence of meetings between the Policing Minister and the weapons manufacturers’ insurer and lobbyist group make clearer than ever why Palestine Action has been banned as a ‘terrorist’ group: not because it posed any threat to the public, but because it threatened the profits of the arms companies enabling Israel’s genocide. These companies lobbied for Palestine Action to be banned, and Starmer’s Government delivered. The British public sees through this, and that’s why they are refusing to accept it.

    It’s nothing short of a scandal that thousands of people are being arrested – from vicars and priests to students and retired healthcare workers – as our fundamental rights to free speech and protest have been stripped away, not to keep us safe, but to protect weapons manufacturers’ interests and enable Israel to continue to slaughter Palestinian people.

    The new Home Secretary must urgently rethink what has become a Poll Tax moment for this imploding Labour Government. Their own party Conference has already been overshadowed by the sight of pensioners and former Labour councillors dragged away by police for peacefully protesting the ban. It took nine hours to arrest just 64 of 100 protesters at the conference gates – if they can’t enforce the ban on their own doorstep, how will they be able to respond to the biggest act of mass civil disobedience in Trafalgar Square this weekend?

    Feature image via Guardian/Youtube.

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on Canary.